As Pat Cox bows out, another Irishman - Bertie Ahern - continues his role as EU ringmaster. Deaglán de Bréadún reports on another long day in Brussels.
The curtain falls.
Applause, applause.
Patrick Kavanagh's lines from The Great Hunger could be applied to Ireland's participation in Europe over the past six months. There are three top jobs in the EU: President of the Parliament, President of the Commission and President of the European Council. Since January, Irish citizens have held two of them.
Pat Cox had a last hurrah yesterday when he met the EU leaders, in his capacity as President of the Parliament, and followed it up with a press conference. His name was still in contention for Romano Prodi's job, despite the fact that he had never been prime minister of anywhere. He was blasé: if he got the job he would take it; otherwise, a long holiday with his family was in prospect.
Either way he was happy: not so much blind as bland ambition. But when a journalist asked if the Commission President should be a French-speaker, Cox's non-committal answer was in French. Point taken. Cox also criticised the secretive nature of the process for choosing a Commission President, which he compared to "the Sistine Chapel without the Holy Ghost".
He and other EU leaders lament the "disconnect" between the people of Europe and their institutions, but it doesn't help when a job as important as President of the Commission is filled in secret over dinner.
Brandy and cigars are no substitute for the ballot-box, even when Consensus Man himself, Bertie Ahern, is doling them out. The Taoiseach also hosted a lunch for the leaders yesterday where he received a round of applause for his performance since January last.
Unfortunately for him, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder do not vote in Irish elections. Longtime observers have noted that foreign politicians appear to have a genuine liking for the Taoiseach, even at a time when his domestic ratings are slipping.
They must have liked him even more when he handed each of them a goodie-bag yesterday which contained the following: 1) One bottle of Locke's eight-year-old single malt whiskey; 2) One DVD featuring RTÉ's coverage of the May Day events, when 10 new members joined the EU; and 3) A specially bound copy of James Joyce's Ulysses.
Foreign ministers got the whiskey and a recording of RTÉ's 1982 broadcast in which the entire text of Ulysses was read by a distinguished cast, including Denis Staunton of this newspaper. European affairs ministers, clearly an uncultured lot, only got the whiskey.
Meanwhile, the pettifogging detail of the constitutional treaty was still being teased out, and by teatime yesterday they still hadn't got around to the Prodi job. Some countries were worried about losing their automatic right to nominate a member of the Commission, others quibbled over voting percentages on the European Council. One felt a certain sympathy for the statesman who said he would agree to a certain proposition, even if he could not explain it over breakfast to his children.
Had nobody in the EU ever heard of the KISS rule? That's the acronym for Keep It Simple, Stupid. What did they think they were, higher mathematicians? But a deal was in the making, they said.
Now the question was, who would get the kiss of approval for President of the Commission? As well as Cox, the other names floating around included Belgium's Verhofstadt (looking increasingly like yesterday's man), Britain's Patten (apparently unwanted by the French), Luxembourg's Juncker (choice of the smart-money punters), and Denmark's Rasmussen (the Danes are considered ambivalent about Europe).
And then, of course, there was Bertie Ahern. A long shot, an outsider, the darkest of dark horses, who had already disclaimed any interest in the job.
But if the EU chieftains decided, in Joyce's words, "as well him as another", surely the Taoiseach, like Molly Bloom, would say, "yes I said yes I will Yes".