The Trib

by David Kenny

  Of the very many questions that arise from all of this, here are just some: why on earth would we sell 7 per cent of Irish land to private investors? Why is a former taoiseach heading up a company registered in the Virgin Islands that wants to profit from more than one million acres of the country he used to run? How much is he getting for whatever advice or help he will be giving to help secure this grand sell-off? Does the Green Party have anything to say? Will Bertie Ahern make a statement on the issue?

  Many of these questions would be irrelevant if Ahern was to resign from the International Forestry Fund, or if the Fund was to confirm that it had no interest whatsoever in Coillte, now, or in the future. Such outcomes seem unlikely, however. The former taoiseach and the company he chairs are apparently both driven by an insatiable greed for money. They are perfect bedfellows.

  Had Fanning and Kenny been in charge of RTÉ for the week, we might have got some sense of proportion on Gerry Ryan’s death

  9 May 2010

  What will we do when Gay Byrne dies? That day is still many years away, hopefully, but when Gaybo’s time comes, how will Ireland mourn the death and celebrate the life of its greatest broadcaster? Now that the Princess Diana treatment – two books of condolences, a plethora of tribute shows, public tears and a live funeral attended by the President – have been given to a popular but much less historically important broadcaster, how do we pay appropriate tribute to the one person in RTÉ’s history who might actually deserve such trappings?

  To come at the question another way: had Gay Byrne died suddenly at age fifty-three in 1987, at the height of his brilliant career, would his death have been greeted with the same hysteria that has marked the past week? There would have been shock, obviously, and tributes. But would the wall that separates private grief from public interest have collapsed as spectacularly as it did over the last ten days? Live funerals have traditionally been awarded to presidents and popes, as acknowledgement of their singular role in the histories of their nations. If they are to be handed out purely on the basis of celebrity, or the shock of premature death, or because the deceased worked in the national broadcaster and knew some people, it demeans the honour and renders it meaningless.

  The decision to broadcast Ryan’s funeral mass live on national radio reflects huge changes in Irish life over the last two decades. Celebrity and achievement are now regarded as sides of the same coin. There is no hierarchy of success. Everybody in the world of celebrity is treated the same way, which is to say nobody is regarded as being better or worse, or as having done a better or worse job, than anybody else. The result, which we’ve seen since Gerry Ryan’s death, is that it becomes impossible for people to judge what is an appropriate tribute when somebody passes on. Hence the unbridled, over-the-top nature of the last week.

  The media, naturally, has had a key role in creating the hype and hysteria. Ryan’s death received more coverage in some tabloids on the day after his death then the September 11 attacks on the US did on 12 September 2001. The madness continued for more than a week. Even when there was nothing left to say, the media found a thousand different ways to say it. Dave Fanning, clearly devastated by the death of a close friend, seemed taken aback by the hysteria of the media coverage. ‘Let’s be honest about this,’ he said during the week, ‘Gerry could be a bollocks too. No question about that. He was self-centred in many ways.’

  It was a rare moment of balance in the ongoing deification of Gerry Ryan, from one of the few RTÉ people to behave as though Ryan’s death was not about them, but about his wife, children, partner and siblings. Pat Kenny was another. His tribute to Ryan on The Late Late Show, in which he described the deceased as one of RTÉ’s holy trinity, along with Gay Byrne and Terry Wogan, was as kind and decent as it was wide of the mark. (Byrne definitely, Wogan possibly, Kenny himself maybe, but Gerry Ryan?) Had Fanning and Kenny been in charge of RTÉ for the week, we might have got some sense of proportion on Ryan’s death. Instead, all was out-of-control hysteria, which actually did Ryan a huge disservice by completely overplaying his role in broadcasting history.

  It wasn’t just the media that was to blame, of course. One characteristic of modern living, which some Irish people share with the citizens of the UK and the US, is a heightened sense of entitlement in which every event is judged on the basis of how it affects the individual. When somebody well-known dies, therefore, Johnny or Julie see the tragedy primarily as something which affects them, though they may never have met the deceased. Grieving becomes a competitive sport: ‘He was my radio husband’; ‘I feel like I’ve lost a friend’. The demand to participate in something that has nothing to do with you, to be publicly validated by your display of grief, is overwhelming.

  This democratisation of grief isn’t a good thing. The funerals of public figures have generally been a reliable guide to the achievements of the deceased, and to the relative contributions they made to the places and communities in which they lived. The media-driven hysteria over Ryan’s death and the frankly stupid coverage of his funeral in papers like the Irish Daily Mail and the Star makes it more difficult to proportionately and fittingly celebrate achievement in the future. The ante has been upped. And not in a good way.

  The journey of the public service employee from unambitious workhorse to shopaholic destroyer of an entire economy has been a sight to behold

  29 November 2009

  As RTÉ viewers and readers of Irish newspapers will know by now, public sector workers are the most evil, self-centred, lazy, opportunistic, stupid, dishonest and vile group of individuals Ireland has ever known. Their thievery knows no bounds and goes back generations. DNA tests on a nurse from Enfield recently discovered she is a direct descendant of a family of cruel kitten killers from the 1890s. Investigations into the background of a teacher in Kilkenny revealed that wealthy ancestors on his mother’s side used to stand outside the homes of starving people during the Famine, munching potato salad sandwiches and feeding the leftovers to the local bird population. What else would he do with that kind of history but look for a job in the public service?

  But of all the insults perpetrated by public sector workers over the years, perhaps the worst was their mass Christmas shopping outing to Newry last Tuesday. Luckily, the media was around to uncover the crime. The day of action, RTÉ confidently reported at lunchtime on Tuesday, had led to an influx of public sector workers who had abandoned their picket lines in search of cheap whiskey (they didn’t quite put it like that, but it was clear what they were getting at). It was an arresting image, no doubt, and one backed up by no evidence whatsoever. I tuned into the Six One News later in the day to see if they were able to put any more meat on their story. Sadly, they were not, although that didn’t stop them pushing an angle that was too attractive to abandon.

  Three witnesses to the madness were interviewed. An Englishman who didn’t work in the public sector thought the busier-than-usual shopping day might have had something to do with the work stoppage, although he didn’t seem sure. A shopper from Dublin who didn’t work in the public sector thought a fellow over there might be in the public sector, although there was no interview with the fellow over there to confirm that suspicion. An elderly woman who didn’t work in the public sector was sure she was surrounded by public sector workers, their horns and pointy tails having completely given the game away.

  RTÉ at least acknowledged that many of the people who arrived in Newry on Tuesday might have been the parents of children who had the day off (which, of course, was always the most likely explanation for the long queue of southern-registered cars meandering towards the town). Nevertheless the impression created and amplified in the following day’s newspapers, was that thousands of strikers had used their day off – taken ostensibly on a point of principle – as an excuse to boost the economy of a foreign nation. The unstated analysis: what would you expect from the people who ruined the country?

  The journey of the public service employee from unambitious, unimaginative workhor
se to shopaholic destroyer of an entire economy has been a sight to behold. During the boom years, nobody worth their salt would be caught dead working in the public service. Our thrusting, creative, adaptable workforce demanded the freedom and excitement offered by the private sector to express themselves (whatever that means), win attention, secure promotion and earn lots of money. By contrast, the public sector was looked on as a kind of fusty fallback position for Denis and Denise Dullknickers, where they could toil away unrecognised by anybody. Judged by the rules and morality of the Celtic Badger, these people were unambitious, and therefore slightly weird, losers.

  Now that the boom is over – wrecked mainly, let us not forget, by the private sector – the public service has been reimagined as the modern equivalent of Nero’s Rome. Denis and Denise have been tried and found guilty of excesses likely to lead to a visit by the International Monetary Fund. A country’s future depends on them being chastised for reckless behaviour they were never aware of.

  To those people in the private sector who insist on the demonisation of public service workers, I would quote the great Roy Keane: ‘Get over it!’ If the public sector was the fantastic land of opportunity you say it is now, you could have joined at any point in your working past. But you made a choice to go the private route, as I did, and as did many of my colleagues who now so boldly lead the charge against the public service. Try as I might, I can’t think of a single reason why public sector workers should be held responsible for that choice.

  TERRY PRONE

  Wham, bam, thank you Obama

  Optimism wins votes – now the opposition must peddle a vision of somewhere over the Rainbow.

  24 December 2006

  We constantly hear about political parties, including those on the opposition benches, paying for American pollsters and campaign experts to cross the Atlantic at high prices to tell them how to win the next general election.

  We’ve heard rather less about something of much more immediate relevance to the upcoming general election: the Obama Factor.

  The Obama Factor is what’s fascinating American political observers at the moment. Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama, one handsome lump of African-American charm, is attracting bigger crowds, airtime, column inches and campaign money than any other potential presidential candidate. And he hasn’t even declared yet.

  It’s happening for a number of reasons. He’s young, good-looking and carries none of the baggage acquired by more experienced Democrats, who have to explain away problems like voting for the war in Iraq. He’s clever and charismatic and possessed of a self-deprecating wit. He’s black without any of the threatening rage issues that have crippled the hopes of men like Jesse Jackson.

  But the biggest thing he has going for him is his ability to offer American voters something different, something hopeful. He doesn’t keep dissecting failed Republican promises, showcasing Republican hate figures and reminding the voters of their responsibility for the creation of a now despised administration.

  He may have peaked too soon. He may soon be exposed as all vision, no specifics. But – right now – he has cottoned on to a fundamental principle of election-winning: people vote for candidates who make the voter feel better about the voter.

  Floating voters are always in the self-esteem business. They want to believe that they’re risktaking idealists. That they can’t be bought. That they care about more than back-pocket money and security. That their vote speaks to their faith in a better future and to their rejection of a squalid present.

  It’s that last consideration that, over the past couple of years, has hobbled the opposition in this country. They’ve been enthusiastically barking up the wrong tree, convinced that if they prove to the voter that Fianna Fáil is essentially and irrevocably corrupt and that the PDs are heartless fascists, all will be well. They’ve missed the positive future tense part of the equation.

  They haven’t been helped by Taoiseach’s Questions. The format of this Dáil procedure requires them to put questions to the Taoiseach. Surrounded as the three opposition leaders are by advisers pushing the flawed notion of ‘strong opposition’, this has meant that, week in, week out, the three of them get delivered into the nation’s sitting rooms, courtesy of TV soundbites, as boring, negative, eternally complaining whingers.

  Inevitable? Not at all. Political leadership isn’t just about inventing policies and keeping the troops motivated. It’s about finding new ways to use – nay, re-invent – old procedures. During the Christmas break, the opposition party leaders would be well advised to figure out how to use the most frequently televised Dáil procedure in a way that doesn’t continue to do them damage. It’s a weekly opportunity to put the Obama Factor in play, and they’d better get the hang of it, smartish.

  The Obama Factor is quintessentially future tense. It assumes people prefer the wide blue yonder of tomorrow to the recycled sock-smell of yesterday. Simple? Obvious? Not to the powers-that-be in some of the opposition parties, one of which, this week, as the rest of us were scissoring ribbons into curly fronds and trying to conceal parcels with giveaway shapes, was demanding time for a Dáil debate on the Moriarty Report Vol I. This is a bit like putting down a motion demanding the right to serve semolina pudding on Christmas Day: why the hell would you want to?

  The answer depends on which bit of the non-tree you’re barking up. If you’re barking up the Duty of the Opposition bit, you believe a report so significant should not be allowed to pass without your TDs hammering home the implications. If you’re barking up the Culture of Crookedness bit, you want yet another chance to point out to the plain people of Ireland that ‘Haughey didn’t do this all on his own, you know’.

  Never mind that the people of Ireland, or at least those represented in opinion polls, are bored rigid by that stuff. Not to mention those for whom the events recorded by the Moriarty Report are distant history, belonging to the bad old days before Ryanair, cappuccinos in cardboard beakers and pre-Christmas shopping in American outlet malls.

  The old management adage applies. If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got. And, for Labour, Fine Gael and the Greens, that ain’t enough.

  If they keep doing what they’ve always done in the past year, they’ll keep getting – post-election – what they’ve always got. Seats on the opposition benches.

  Mr Haughey, you’ll do whatever you decide. I’m just telling you what you should do

  20 January 2008

  ‘Mister Haughey’s on the phone, looking for Tom,’ my assistant told me. ‘But Tom’s not here. Will you talk to him?’

  My heart did a bungee jump. Forget that cliché about hearts going into boots. Mine visited my extremities, then bounced back and hit my larynx. Not that Haughey was ever unpleasant to any of us. It was just that if he was ringing at 10 a.m., and looking for Tom Savage, then he had a problem unlikely to be solvable by me.

  I figured the problem had to do with the Progressive Democrats. The new party was only a few weeks old at that point. But for a tiny newborn, it was creating one hell of a stir – mainly by inspired timing. A high-profile defection from a major political party would occupy the national attention for one week. Then there would be a lull, during which that party would convince itself that the departure wasn’t a loss but a gain. At the same time, media and public would wonder if that was the end of it.

  It never was. Just as the national pulse returned to normal, a press conference or photocall or mass meeting would be announced, and a high profiler from another big party would join the PDs. Even if you had no interest in politics, you were reached by the dramatic tension. If you had an interest in politics, you got sucked into the latest conspiracy theory. Charlie McCreevy or Seamus Brennan were definitely going to be the next movers from Fianna Fáil, you were told.

  When McCreevy and Brennan’s posteriors stayed glued to FF seats, the explanation was that their tenure was temporary and that they’d be departing in a matter
of weeks. Theories abounded, and the PDs did what Mary Harney later defined as their great strength: in media terms, they punched way above their weight.

  It figured, therefore, that Haughey’s problem related to this ongoing scenario. It did. In a tense growl, he told me that Bobby Molloy would be walking from Fianna Fáil within hours, his defection neatly timed to ensure that Charlie Haughey would be door-stepped at the entrance to (if I remember rightly) the Burlington Hotel by a phalanx of journalists wanting to get his reaction to the latest runner from the ranks.

  Haughey had wanted Tom Savage’s advice on whether he should simply walk past the media or say something to them, and if he was going to say something, what he should say.

  ‘What’s your own instinct?’ I asked.

  The question was asked, partly because only a half-witted consultant leaps into the breach, offering advice that’s going to run counter to what the individual wants to do, before they’ve found out what exactly it is the individual wants to do. It was also playing for time. I hadn’t been paying that much attention to the progress of the PDs.

  Obviously reading from some notes, he monotoned his way through a litany of the proud history and present-day vibrancy of the Fianna Fáil party. (Whenever FF talk vibrancy, it’s a dead giveaway. They’re goosed and know it. Whenever Fine Gael talk about the need for a national debate, it’s a version of the same thing. They want two other people to argue with each other and come to the FG point of view.) ‘No,’ I said, suddenly certain. ‘No, you won’t say that.’

  ‘I must send a strong message to the grassroots,’ he responded.

  ‘Frig the grassroots,’ I said. ‘The grassroots you always have with you. It’s the waverers you have to reach today, and you’re not going to reach them by making those kind of predictable threatened noises.’