THE GOVERNMENT’S austerity programme appeared to gain a puritanical edge yesterday with a Cabinet decision to withdraw Ireland from membership of an international body dealing with the scientific and technical aspects of winemaking.
The International Organisation of Vine and Wine is an intergovernmental organisation based in Paris, best-known by the acronym OIV, from its French-language title, L’Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin.
Ireland joined OIV in 2004 and the other 44 member states include Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Slovenia and Spain. The savings to the State from ending its membership amount to €14,000 per annum, or the rough cost of four bottles of Château Petrus 1982 or Château Lafite-Rothschild from the same year, two fine wines from the Bordeaux region.
The proposal to Cabinet yesterday morning was made by the Minister for Food, Simon Coveney. A spokeswoman said the cutback was “a cost-saving measure” and part of the department’s expenditure review, which began when the Coalition took over in March.
The late Charles Haughey, a man with a taste for fine wines, must be turning in his grave at this departure from international solidarity to promote what is regarded as one of life’s pleasures.
The founder of Irish republicanism, Theobald Wolfe Tone, was a man of similar tastes, and his autobiography describes nights out full of “politics and wine”, getting “generally drunk” on mulled wine, and even drinking “poisonous” wine in Ballinasloe.
In one of the seminal works of patriotic literature, James Clarence Mangan's poem Dark Rosaleen, the long-suffering Irish nation is promised "wine from the royal pope" to sustain her: however this latest decision is not believed to be connected with the recent closure of the Vatican embassy.
The background to the decision is shrouded in secrecy. A query to the department from The Irish Timeson the background to Ireland's membership went unanswered.