Wallowing in self-pity, Bull goes for the easy fences

It isn't nice when the rest of your colleagues are in on the scam, but you're the one forced to take the rap, writes MIRIAM LORD

WHEN TWO icons of the turf bowed out yesterday, the worlds of sport and politics overlapped with twin tales of a stallion and a bull. Sea the Stars retired after an illustrious career spanning the great racecourses of the world. So did John O’Donoghue.

One was a multiple winner on the track, the other a serial punter at the track. Longchamp was where it all ended – for both of them.

The tributes flowed.

“Phenomenal.” – John Oxx, trainer.

“He had everything: class, speed and temperament.” – Denis Egan, Turf Club.

“He cost us a small fortune.” – David Stevens, Corals Bookmakers.

Sea the Stars is going to stud.

“He cost us a large fortune.” – Joe Bloggs, Irish taxpayer.

“He had it comin’.” – Nora Owen, former justice minister.

“Our primary constitutional duty is to the people who elect us.” – Eamon Gilmore.

“There was a wrong done.” – former ceann comhairle. Bull O’Donoghue is going to war.

The stables of Ireland were quiet last night as trembling thoroughbreds chewed on the sad news of The Bull’s early retirement.

“I’ll never forget those great days we had together at Longchamp, Chantilly and Cheltenham. John never missed a classic,” snorted an emotional Giddyupdobbin Walsh-Weld from Kildare.

But while the racehorses may be distraught, but there is no truth in the rumour that Punchestown has been cancelled today as a mark of respect.

Cheer up, Neddy! Every cloud has a silver lining. As and from today, The Bull will have more free time to go to the races . . .

The races were never far from our minds when John O’Donoghue delivered his resignation statement to the Dáil.

As he went on – and on and on; as his lips curled ever further down towards his shoes and his tone of injured innocence grew more irritating; as fine words cloaked the facts he chose to ignore – we kept thinking of the races.

Of how he might have been better off choosing a short sprint of a speech rather than a self- serving Grand National of indignation. Of how the fences he elected to jump – the easy ones – only drew attention to the ones he decided to gallop around.

He made a virtue of using the Government jet for international travel just 14 times. What about the first-class ones ones on scheduled airlines. What about all the internal flights?

He drew attention to particular hotel and transport costs – doing what any good solicitor does: highlighting the good points of his case. But there’ll be plenty of poring over the details he didn’t divulge come the weekend.

Determined to go down fighting, The Bull felt it was only right to point out that he wasn’t doing anything untoward when running up huge expenses.

Wallowing in self-pity, he said he has been made “a symbol of an expenses regime that had been in operation for decades that has fallen into disrepute”. In other words, you may not like what I was doing, but everyone was at it.

Around him, specially on the Government benches, deputies and ministers shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

However, in this political handicap race, The Bull struggled under too much weight.

“While there may be a difference of scale with some in this House, there is no difference of principle between me and many others who are subject to these regimes.” The scales have been the undoing of many a good horse – not to mention The Bull.

Politics is different to the real world’s relationship with lavish spenders. In the real world, banks gets bailed out and the small- change people lose their houses. To Bull’s chagrin yesterday, it happened the other way around for him.

He hasn’t seen the newspapers, or the likes of Eamon Gilmore, pursuing the less profligate among his colleagues for running up claims. Truly, the man has been hard done by and he wasn’t going to let anyone forget it.

All the same, O’Donoghue is entitled to feel peeved and hard done by. It isn’t nice when the rest of your colleagues are in on the scam, but you’re the one forced to take the rap.

But John, John. It was those race meetings you omitted to mention in your impressively crafted and beautifully delivered justification for past extravagances that stayed in the mind.

Not the fact of your sterling work while in the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism – which you managed to outline in far more detail that your peregrinations around various racecourses while on State business – or the fact that you remained resolutely out of any discussion to do with d’expinses in order to preserve the dignity of the office of Ceann Comhairle – even if the small matter of sending a solicitor’s letter to a Sunday newspaper appeared to breach that personal decision.

No. It was visions of Longchamp and Chantilly and the rest that weren’t sufficiently explained yesterday.

Kate Ann O’Donoghue, the former ceann comhairle’s wife who travelled with him on a large number of the trips abroad, was in the visitors gallery to see him make his statement. She sat in the middle of the front row – impossible to miss in her white linen suit with block edging and large black Jackie O sunglasses.

At the end of his 30-minute defence, The Bull finished to a round of applause. An emotional Beverley Flynn leapt to her feet – she knows what its like to be on the wrong side of a Dáil kicking. But she was on her own.

As for The Bull, support from Beverley was, perhaps, all he needed. It went downhill from there, as he returned to the backbenches and found himself sitting between Charlie O’Connor and Michael Woods.

The Bull’s ceremonial robe was removed from his shoulders as soon as he stepped down from The Chair. An hour later, it had passed to Séamus Kirk, new Ceann Comhairle, henceforth to be known as Cap’n Kirk.

This comes with the added bonus of being able to refer to Fianna Fáil and the Greens – fresh from agreeing their Programme for Staying in Government – as The Klingons.