Both the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste are currently out of the country and this morning Mary O'Rourke is in charge. Not, indeed, that it matters much, either practically, since things seems to be progressing smoothly enough and modern communications mean they can talk to each other and to Dublin headquarters from any part of the globe; or constitutionally, since a High Court finding of 1995. Then, a claim by an individual under Article 28 of the Constitution that if the taoiseach was absent the tanaiste had to be at home was dismissed.
The tanaiste, the court found, assumed the functions of the taoiseach when he/she was absent in the sense of being temporarily unable to fulfil his functions through illness, incapacity or being incommunicado whether at home or abroad. As long as the tanaiste was not absent in the same sense during this time he/she was complying with constitutional duty, regardless of whether he/she was within the geographic confines of the State or not.
So there you have it. FG leader John Bruton raised the subject in the Dail on Wednesday when Michael Woods had to take the order of business in the absence of both taoiseach and tanaiste. Where, he wanted to know, was Mary Harney on this, International Women's Day? Bertie Ahern wasn't there because he was in Darwin at the start of official visits to Australia, East Timor and Washington. Harney wasn't there because on a seriously busy day things were running seriously behind schedule. First there was the affair of the breakfast. Harney and junior minister Noel Treacy were launching the £560m Technology Foresight Fund at Dublin Castle and 300 leading lights from business, academia and the civil service were invited to partake of a light breakfast. But no breakfast had appeared by 8.45 a.m. Eventually tea and buns, or more precisely for these circles, coffee and croissants, were sent for.
Harney remarked that she hoped the breakdown had nothing to do with it being International Women's Day; Treacy made a joke about the beginning of Lent. But the upshot was that everything was delayed. After the media interviews she rushed to Leinster House for the 10.30 Order of Business but Bruton was already on his feet.
Then there was a couple of hours talking about the minimum wage at a select committee before leaving for Boston to open the new Enterprise Ireland office. Today she is grand marshall at the St Patrick's Day parade in Atlanta, Georgia, Ahern is in Melbourne and the rest of the Cabinet has the globe covered for the coming week.