O Cuiv shows mastery of one of the dark arts of Irish politics

On the night of May 14th the Minister of State for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Eamon O Cuiv, took part in a debate on the Nice Treaty in Galway.

Since the Minister has a reputation for plain speaking and for a degree of scepticism about the operation of the EU, The Irish Times's western correspondent, Lorna Siggins, sensed there might be a story here. Any criticism of the treaty from a minister in the course of a referendum campaign would be big news.

As the meeting might not end before her deadline for the next day's paper, she called Eamon O Cuiv and asked what he was going to say. His response was, in strict news terms, a bit of a disappointment, more "Dog bites man" than "Man bites dog". The Minister toed the Government line.

The EU enlargement made possible by the treaty, he said, would be one of the greatest protections we would ever have against excessive centralism in Brussels.

As for fears that Ireland might be dragged into peace-enforcement missions through the Rapid Reaction Force, that was simply not what the Nice Treaty was about. The next morning, his remarks made a modest story on an inside page, not a front-page exclusive.

The story was, however, somewhat puzzling to many of those who had attended the debate. For what the Minister actually told the debate that night seemed to many of his listeners to fall far short of the ringing endorsement of the treaty he had given to The Irish Times. Faced with his words in print, however, the debate organisers, the anti-Nice Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA), clearly felt it must have got the wrong impression and that the Minister was, after all, campaigning for a Yes vote.

On the day of the referendum vote, June 7th, the Galway Advertiser carried a letter from the Galway branch of PANA expressing "our dismay and disappointment at the position taken by Minister O Cuiv on Nice". How was it to know that, almost as soon as it became clear that the No campaign had won, the same Minister O Cuiv would announce that his position was actually the same as its and that he, too, had voted No?

At one level, Eamon O Cuiv was simply showing his mastery of one of the dark arts of Irish politics: telling each audience what you think they want to hear.

Through The Irish Times, he was sending a message to his Government colleagues that he was toeing the line. Through his ambiguous remarks at the debate, he was leaving himself some room to manoeuvre. And through his timely announcement that he was, after all, on the winning side, he was minding his back in a constituency where one of his rivals in the next election may well be the high-profile anti-Nice MEP, Dana Rosemary Scallon.

This was, then, a classic performance in the great tradition of the late Brian Lenihan. It was also, though, a spectacular example of the petty hypocrisy that has slowly corroded public trust in politics.

To add an extra twist of audacity, the famous plain speaker even had the nerve to round on "the Establishment" for "insulting the intelligence of the electorate".

Since when is a Minister of State not part of the Establishment? And how much more insulting can you be than asking the electorate to vote for a treaty you yourself don't believe in?

Compared to the Olympian levels of hypocrisy achieved by his former leader, Charles Haughey, Eamon O Cuiv's linguistic manoeuvres may seem insignificant. Arguably, however, they do just as much damage to the basic relationship of trust between citizen and politician that is essential to a healthy democracy.

The distinction he drew in justifying himself, between his duty as a Minister and his conscience as a citizen, is precisely the one that has brought politics into such contempt.

The basic idea of republican democracy, surely, is that the government minister is a citizen acting on behalf of other citizens. The O Cuiv line that a minister is some kind of artificial creature with official views that may have nothing to do with the actual feelings, opinions and instincts of the real person is what gives voters the creeps.

Especially in the age of television, where politics is conducted through personality, the construction of an official self which may or may not be related to the real person underneath strikes most citizens as deeply untrustworthy.

This is not an abstract issue. The adoption of an official persona at odds with the basic human instincts of the politician in question leads directly to the kind of behaviour that has brought the State into disrepute.

No one believes that Michael Noonan is a cruel, nasty man who takes pleasure from the hounding of sick women. But the suppression of his basic human instincts and the adoption of an official persona led him, as minister for health, to do precisely that to Brigid McCole.

No one believes that Michael Woods is a hard-hearted tyrant. He only behaves that way in relation to Jamie and Kathryn Sinnott because that's what his official self is supposed to do.

How long will it be before the penny drops and politicians respond to the public hunger for leaders who actually say what they think?

How long before they feel able to say, as Edmund Burke said to his constituents, that "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion"?

Maybe the evidence from the Nice referendum that vast swathes of the electorate are now either entirely disconnected or seething with anger might be enough to drive the point home. Come to think of it, perhaps Eamon O Cuiv was working to a cunning plan. Wanting a No vote, he realised that the best way to get it was for insincere politicians to go around asking people to vote Yes.

fotoole@irish-times.ie