Leinster House comedy is worthy of Yes, Minister

WHENEVER politicians and their ilk are gathered in these islands, you can bet that a quote from Yes, Minister will be used to explain another bureaucratic absurdity. Antony Jay, who wrote the classic BBC series, was very British and the concept was very Westminster, but similar administrative idiocies echo through the corridors of power in Dublin. Jay died last week aged 86. I was lucky enough to see Charlie Haughey elected Taoiseach in 1987. It was the last single-party government in the Dáil, before the current one, and the ministers and their enablers in the civil service provided vintage political burlesque.

My own favourite concerned An Bord Snip, the nickname for the Expenditure Review Committee, where economist Colm McCarthy sat with Haughey, finance minister Ray MacSharry and two senior civil servants. Their aim was to cut public spending and one of my favourite stories concerns the Department of Foreign Affairs, which at that time had 45 embassies overseas.

FOREIGN Affairs was asked to close three embassies, but officials said they were all essential. The solution, said a non-political member of An Bord Snip, was to meet the minister and ask him to recall the countries where each of the 45 embassies was located: ‘Any he forgets, we’ll close.’ However, the then-minister for foreign affairs (Brian Lenihan Sr) was not required to do a Jimmy Magee memory test and officials selected three embassies for closing.

An Bord Snip had another showdown, this time with the Department of Defence, where officials insisted they needed a second-hand British submarine. There was no satisfactory answer to the question: why? The decision was postponed for a year, but the grumps at An Bord Snip then told officials that if the British still hadn’t sold it, it couldn’t be very good; plans for Irish submariners were abandoned.

At another confrontation, Defence specialists asked An Bord Snip to approve spending on very sophisticated military equipment ‘for use if Ireland is invaded’. One wag in An Bord Snip said that if the Russians did invade, pray that it was on a Friday afternoon when the quays in Dublin were in gridlock – then the invaders would get stuck in traffic on their way to Collins Barracks.

When Haughey appointed Bertie Ahern to negotiate the first national wage agreement between unions and employers in 1987, union bosses were invited to Paris and dinner in one the city’s most exclusive restaurants. The late PJ Mara, the government press secretary, was a facilitator and, in deference to the ITGWU boss Christy Kirwan, ordered one of the most expensive bottles on the wine list. Senior civil servants became anxious as successive expensive bottles of wine were uncorked for toasts. The bill was creeping up to £5,000 and none of the senior civil servants would take responsibility when PJ Mara paid with his personal credit card.

Mara said his expenses were kicked around departments before Haughey intervened and asked a mandarin to okay them; he explained that the wine had sold the national wage agreement to the unions.

An Bord Snip Nua was the brainchild of Brian Lenihan Jr as minister for finance in 2008. By the time the Fianna Fáil-led coalition had left office in 2011, public spending was cut by €5.3bn, social welfare was down by 5% and 17,300 public service jobs were gone. And the country was a basket case... THE Olympic Council of Ireland seems to have taken the late Seamus Heaney’s poem Whatever You Say, Say Nothing as its watchword when asked about its erstwhile president Pat Hickey’s travelling expenses.

I have it on impeccable authority that two first-class, open return tickets to Rio, purchased for Hickey, pictured, and his wife Sylviane, each cost €12,282.

Unless you fly in a chartered jet, there is no more expensive way of getting to Rio. And, I’m assured, the airline tickets were negotiated by a reputable travel agent. ALAN KELLY can bank on his brother’s largesse if he wants to swap his leadership ambitions in the Irish Labour Party for a career lobbying for Brexit.

Last week Teneo, the US public affairs firm founded by former Examiner journalist Declan Kelly, hired retired British foreign secretary William Hague for its ‘Brexit Client Transition Unit’.

It was reported that Hague will earn at least £250,000 for his part-time job, although he will not be undertaking any advocacy with the government.

I’m sure Declan could find a place for Alan, his red-blooded socialist brother, among Teneo’s blue-chip clients, which include HSBC, Coca-Cola and Nissan.