The Drumcondra mafia, that is.  Can anyone keep track of the last two days’ Mahon revelations, let alone reconcile them with earlier testimony?  In particular, we have learned that it looks like Celia Larkin was never intended to be out of pocket, at least not anytime soon, on the loan that she got to buy the house for the two aunts, since the FF account from which the funds were lent was repaid by Bertie Ahern; so the Celia loan is now in effect rolled over to him.  This came right after the exploration of Celia as Michael Wall’s personal shopper (a skill that is taught at Beauty at the Blue Door, by the way).  Today Bertie has accepted the inevitable — that his previous account of lodgments to the Irish Permanent account didn’t add up and they were sterling.   Yet to be explained is who made a sterling lodgement to the Building Trust (or is Bertie/Tim?) account in October 2004.   By a process of elimination (since Tim, Bertie, Joe Burke, and apparently Grainne Carruth didn’t) is Celia Larkin.  Is she the key to the Grand Unified Theory of Bertiegate? 

The World Food Summit being held by the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome today is likely to call for a successful conclusion of the Doha WTO talks (see for example the going-in position of the US Agriculture Secretary).  This is symbolic of why Brian Cowen cannot make a formal commitment to veto an agreement for the EU partners as part of getting a Yes vote from the farmers — he could wind up being accused of taking food out of the mouths of poor people.  Let’s see how understanding the IFA is of his predicament.

Quentin Peel in the Financial Times has been doing a nice job with occasional look-ins at the referendum campaign and prospects.  Today he goes through the options that none of the EU governments or the EU institutions want to talk about: what happens if the treaty is rejected?  He sets out 4: an added Ireland-only protocol with a revote, renegotiation, fait accompli (where the 26 would act as if it was ratified and leave Ireland to find its own solution), or dumping the entire treaty.  He also looks at the very specific headaches it would create for Gordon Brown, where parliamentary ratification will be contentious.   Particularly interesting is his view that Lisbon is an unloved project among the large member states, who might not shed too many tears with a walk-away.   Note also the latest noises about another referendum (after the brief prospect of one in Poland): now Italy might have one.

Does any of this sound familiar? –

Not all of the money was a gift, New York businessman Morris Talansky told the court.  Some of the cash “donations” handed over to Olmert were loans, which he expected to be repaid. “Famous last words,” Talansky jokingly told the court when he explained that the money was never seen again.

Mr Talansky told the hearing that the bulk of the money was raised in New York “parlour meetings”, where Mr Olmert would address US donors who would then leave contributions on their chairs.

“I gave [Mr Olmert] cash in envelopes,” the millionaire campaign fundraiser said, according to a transcript of the hearing.  “I asked him why I couldn’t write a cheque and he said it’s because of the way the money is channelled.”  When asked how the money was spent by Mr Olmert, Mr Talansky said: “I only know that he loved expensive cigars. I know he loved pens, watches. I found it strange.”

[News stories here and here].  A few interesting points.  Note first the similarities — The PM would go to social meetings and cash would be left lying around for him. Sometimes an assistant would handle the transactions.  The aversion to cheques.  The inability, so far, to demonstrate any favours in return for the money.

But note also the differences: The Israeli police are investigating, not a Tribunal, and the alleged donations took place only a few years ago.  The principals can still be tracked down.  And the police are pushing forward despite Olmert’s pivotal role in the local peace process.

They do politics a little differently in Israel.

The Wall Street Journal has an article today about the referendum.  To the reporter’s credit, he avoids the usual style of foreign reporting — asking taxi-drivers on the way in from the airport to the 5-star hotel — and goes to Carlow and Laois to get the viewpoint of farmers.  Declan Ganley and Ulick McEvaddy are mentioned briefly, and not in the context of the controversy around links between their corporate and political operations.  Worth a read.

Here’s the transcript of today’s showdown in the Dail between Enda Kenny (and a chorus) and Brian Cowen.  The record doesn’t capture an apparent swear word that was used by Cowen in the course of the proceedings.  But it does make clear that Cowen never answered Kenny’s question about what had happened to funds allocated to palliative care over the last three years — and whether HSE managers had collected income for managing a program that was never implemented.   More generally, it looks like Cowen’s style will not be like Bertie’s, who was much better at parrying the jabs from the opposition and relying on the briefing book to give what sounded like an answer.  The early evidence that Cowen prefers old style shouting and roaring (”For Deputy Reilly’s attention, I can organise it so that every time his man completes a sentence, I can have people roaring and shouting on this side if he wants.”)

When Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair last summer, he was hit by the floods and then the foot and mouth outbreak — and went up in the polls.  Brian Cowen might need a similar trend over the next couple of months.  With Lisbon and the economy already looking like the hot potatoes of what should be a honeymoon period, today brings news that will have major symbolic impact — that the long-rumoured shift in Guinness operations out of St James’ Gate could be announced tomorrow.  According to RTE, corporate parent Diageo’s CEO is flying in to make an announcement, which suggests it is not a run of the mill press release.  So what does it mean?

No doubt Diageo will have a well-flagged set of arguments that have some justification.  Irish people don’t drink as much Guinness as they used to.  The net job loss is small because they will shift operations to a new site in Dublin.  The St James site is far more valuable for other use than as an industrial operation.

But the cultural significance won’t be lost on anyone.  One of Dublin’s iconic sites, producing the nation’s iconic drink, is going.   And the shift of jobs and life out of central Dublin will continue (a trend that the last census clearly revealed).   The timing in terms of the economic cycle is not good.  

It will be interesting to see how much of the public reaction will be at the general level of identity — is the closing of the brewery just an incidental side-effect of modernisation, or does it capture a broader loss of distinctiveness as the country becomes more European?  At least the newspapers don’t have to worry about how they’ll the fill the column inches once they’ve exhausted the Bertie tributes and Cowen profiles.  

RTE’s summary of the Cabinet changes below.  Quick reaction: Brian Lenihan now the rapid riser (to Finance) after years of being arguably under-placed in Bertie’s cabinets.  But Cowen avoids the designation of an heir-apparent by splitting Tanaiste (Mary Coughlan) from the “great portfolios” (i.e. Finance and Foreign Affairs — Micheál Martin).  Dermot Ahern arguably demoted and Noel Dempsey arguably allowed to fantasize (if he was reading the papers) but then kept in place.

Mary Coughlan becomes Tánaiste, while also taking the portfolio of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

AdvertisementBrian Lenihan is the new Minister for Finance, while Batt O’Keefe becomes Minister for Education, taking Mary Hanafin’s portfolio. She moves to Social and Family Affairs.

Pat Carey becomes Chief Whip, a move which sees Tom Kitt return to the back benches.

The new Minister for Justice is Dermot Ahern, while his position in Foreign Affairs is taken by Micheál Martin.

Martin Cullen is Minister for Arts Sport and Tourism and Brendan Smith takes Mary Coughlan’s position in Agriculture and Food.

Mary Harney retains her position as Minister for Health as does Willie O’Dea, who stays with Defence. John Gormley and Eamon Ryan see no change, remaining in Environment, and Communications Energy and Natural Resources, respectively.

Noel Dempsey, in Transport, and Eamon Ó Cuív, in Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, also stay put.

Just a short post linking to this BBC story apparently drawn from Paris and Brussels gossip about the candidates for the position of EU Council Presidency — a job of course whose existence later this year is dependent on Ireland passing the Lisbon treaty (and if the No votes spikes up with each round of Bertie hagiography, as it seems to, the treaty could be in more trouble after today).   Anyway, the gist of the story is that Tony Blair is out, despite support from Sarko, because Angie Merkel vetoed him over the Iraq war and the extensive UK opt-outs.  Other mentioned candidates include Jose Manuel Barroso, Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Danish PM), and EU Council veteran Jean-Claude Juncker (Luxembourg PM).  Noticeably absent from the list is Bertie himself, which could be due to any or all of (1) he was never really in the running, (2) some of the Irish opt-outs (e.g. Schengen) may be held against us, (3) the ability to broker oneself into the job weakens without a seat at the table or a powerful patron, or (4) some of the other Council members have been reading the Mahon coverage and wonder if banana skins still lie ahead.   Bottom line: the speculation about Bertie’s next slot probably shouldn’t include this job.

Here is the five page executive summary of the report of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development looking at the management of the public service in Ireland.  Once you wade past the quasi-diplomacy on the first page and a half, it’s a damning indictment of how the public service has been run, albeit one buried in public management lingo.   The report is too polite to state the one huge implicit question: what was going on in government for the last 10 years?

The key conceptual device of the report is to distinguish “civil service” — the stereotypical administrative functions performed in the core government departments — from the broader “public service” — the civil service plus a panoply of state agencies and authorities with whom the members of the public usually deal when they need something done.  Bertie Ahern has expressed astonishment that there are apparently 800 of the latter agencies.  And the main theme of the report is a lack of public service integration, both between the civil service and the agencies, and among the agencies themselves.  A few phrases from the report –

segmented … sub-optimal coherence … system-wide coherence .. fragmentation and disconnects … performance measures need to look at outcomes rather than inputs or processes  … renewed emphasis on the role of ICT and e-government … few opportunities for generalist staff

Among the ironies: the country that has a global reputation for having built its boom on information technology is way behind in its own use of IT.  And many of the reforms that are called for in the report are the kind of thing that benchmarking was already supposed to have delivered.  Not showing much humility, here is what Brian Cowen had to say –

But there is a limit to the level of criticism that I will accept of the thousands of dedicated and hard working civil servants, health care workers, teachers, local authority workers, Gardaí and others who contribute to the delivery of our public services.

Note how criticism of the government’s running of the public service is converted, by Cowen, into criticism of the frontline workers — an identical tactic to that used by George Bush when his management of the Iraq war is criticised.    In addition, Cowen didn’t exactly sound raring to go –

The Review provides much food for thought for me and my colleagues. Some recommendations I can sign up to straight away; some will require further reflection; some may ultimately prove to be unsuitable to Irish circumstances. I am determined to take decisive action to improve Irish public services and look forward to working with the social partners to achieve this. I intend that when I am Taoiseach, I and my successor as Minister for Finance will set out our more detailed response to the Review.

Unfortunately, the summary of the report does not cover what could be its most concrete consequence — a negative evaluation of the “decentralisation” program, which could provide Cowen an opportunity to kill or scale back one of the worst of the McCreevy legacies. 

But what are the prospects for broader reform?  Bertie’s horror at the existence of 800 public agencies did not come with any regret at the number of appointments that they facilitated.   I remember once talking to an understandably disillusioned FG veteran who complained that the public and media didn’t understand the role that the authorities and agencies played in building the FF base: 800 agencies = thousands of appointments over the lifetime of a government = a lot of potentially influential people happy with the way things are.

So good luck to the OECD team.  Let’s hope their report doesn’t head straight to the shelf.