Dropping the odd clanger is O'Rourke's diversionary art

As our Friends in Manhattan would say, the Minister for Public Enterprise gave us slightly more information than we needed while speaking on RTE radio the other morning. Reacting to the resignation of CIE chairman Brian Joyce, Mary O'Rourke mentioned to Morning Ireland that she had been taking a bath when she heard the news.

This led to her opposite number in Fine Gael, Ivan Yates, mischievously accusing her of "dropping the towel" on the CIE issue during a live television debate on RTE's Prime Time.

O'Rourke (62) duly set upon Yates, giving him one of her by now legendary tongue lashings. "Some people know exactly how to push her buttons," one political source later observed.

Questioned by a colleague as to why she had mentioned her daily ablutions on national radio, O'Rourke said she had wanted to sound "homely". Others suspect the real reason she occasionally drops these clangers is to divert attention from whatever thorny topic is at hand.

In this case it worked. The Prime Time debate had more people pondering Ivan Yates's nerve and Mary O'Rourke's right to enjoy an early-morning soak than the merits of the Minister's policy on public transport - a positive outcome for O'Rourke. One political source described her as "an affable person, an exceptionally cute politician . . . she would regularly play the girly thing and is excellent at diverting attention and not dealing with the issue".

Of the woman whose media nickname is "Mammy", he said; "She is very friendly. She mothers you, which makes her very difficult to attack." Another source recently on the receiving end of her ire complained that she could turn from mother figure to childeater in seconds.

According to her former nemesis, Gemma Hussey, minister for education at a time when O'Rourke, now deputy Fianna Fail leader, was opposition spokeswoman, she is a "consummate politician in the family style".

Her father, P.J. Lenihan, was a TD for Longford-Westmeath from 1965 to 1990, while her brother, the late Brian Lenihan, was a key Fianna Fail politician. Her two nephews, Conor and Brian Lenihan, also hold Dail seats.

"The jury is out on her record with semistates: this Government, like other governments, have not come to terms with what exactly they want these organisations to do and how much they should interfere . . . but she has a long record and has to be admired for almost getting to the top in her party," Gemma Hussey said.

"She can take your breath away," she continued, remembering one time when, as chair of the Rape Crisis Centre, she had a meeting with O'Rourke, then minister for health, about a very serious issue. "The first thing she said to me was, `Gem, that's a lovely blouse'. "

Since becoming Minister for Public Enterprise almost three years ago, this self-confessed workaholic has had less and less time for browsing in one of her favourite stores, the Kilkenny Design Shop on Dublin's Nassau Street.

Her brief stretches across 10 semi-state bodies. She has presided over the Eircom flotation and the deregulation of the telecommunications and electricity markets, and is now preparing to privatise partly Aer Lingus and Aer Rianta.

Implementing massive competitive changes in the areas of aircraft, trains (Luas included) and automobiles requires every ounce of the "boundless energy" her colleagues say she possesses. She rises at 7 a.m. every morning, walks to work from her Ballsbridge apartment and is at her office at 7.30 a.m. She has been known to attend up to 18 meetings a day.

Born in May 1937, she entered politics late when she joined Athlone Urban District Council aged 44. Previously she had been a secondary schoolteacher, receiving her H.Dip from Maynooth, which had just begun to admit lay people as mature students. A brief stint as a senator led to her election to the Dail in 1982.

She was minister for education from 1987 until 1992, when her challenge for the Fianna Fail leadership won her a paltry six votes out of 77. In the reshuffle she was demoted to minister of state by Albert Reynolds but she immersed herself in her new job at the Department of Industry and Commerce.

In 1993 she became minister of state for labour affairs and the following year she was appointed deputy leader of Fianna Fail, having attached herself early on to the rapidly going-places Bertie Ahern.

A source in the semi-state sector said what he has noticed most is O'Rourke's ability to shift from an operational company issue to the political implications of that issue "like greased lightning".

"She has only one objective," he said of this trait. "To maintain her brand, the brand of O'Rourke."

Mary O'Rourke - is, according to another source, a "a Lenihan through and through, steeped in politics, politically aware to the exclusion of all else. She sees everything in the context of her job as a politician."

She has cultivated this "skittish, batty, bullshit" as a way of reducing the gravity of any issue. "She has brought it to an art form: it's a deliberate way of giving non-answers, some people find it quite nauseating," he said, adding that this alternative to Teflon can backfire.

"She has a short fuse: you can wind her up if you know how to give her the right type of insult and she will just lose it . . . at these times she is often more batty than she actually intends to be," he said.

Ivan Yates believes O'Rourke has no medium to long-term policy in relation to the semi-states: "It is all populist political solutions that will reflect on her career and her party in the here and now," he said.

Within the party she is seen as "extremely competent", a senior Fianna Fail source said. "People know she won't let the party down on any matter of public policy . . . her style is admired and some only wish that they could get away with it".

There is a story told about Mary O'Rourke which illustrates her ability to "f**k you out of it using a very sharp tongue", as one observer in the semi-state sector put it. When Padraig Flynn was given the dirty job of travelling to Athlone to inform Brian Lenihan that he would have to resign as minister for defence over the tapes controversy, he was said to have been intercepted by Mary O'Rourke.

"You can just feck off back across the Shannon where you came from," she told him.

It's not surprising then that "formidable" is a word used with regularity about Mrs, sorry Ms, O'Rourke. (She has in the past asked The Irish Times why the paper does not call her Ms. "I suppose you think I look like a Mrs," she mused.)

The Minister can be seen in another guise as the buxom Dail barwoman in RTE's satirical TV show Bull Island. She is said to get a kick out of her character, despite the fact that it is played by a man.

"I like anyone who can carry themselves while under fire," said actor Frank Twomey, Bull Island's "Rourkey", when asked for his view of the Minister. The Bull Island team couldn't have hoped to write a better script than Bathgate. "She is my hero at the moment," he said.