Drapier/An Insider's Guide To Politics: The impact of Charlie McCreevy's boot on Tom Parlon's political scrotum was excruciating. None the less so as the kick was delivered with a hefty dose of Charlie's customary feckless joviality.
Tom, said Charlie in the Dáil this week, was not involved in the decision to move civil service jobs to Laois. Not involved at all. He knew no more about it than the few titbits he picked up in a pub near Leinster House the night before the Budget.
Charlie beamed throughout. Tom grimaced and tried to pretend that he couldn't feel the pain. For those of us looking on it was a bit like watching a football match when the striker hits a free kick into the nether regions of the defensive wall. You can feel the pain of the defenders but it's sort of funny all the same.
The relationship between junior Ministers and their senior colleagues is often fraught and sometimes nasty. A few juniors have real jobs but most do not. Mostly they do what the senior guy doesn't want to do. In return the senior guy says nice things about them in public and throws the occasional smartie in the direction of his minion's constituency. The last thing you expect is for the senior to get up in the Dáil and tell the nation that you're a chancer. But then with Charlie McCreevy you can never be sure. All politicians claim credit for things. Drapier does it all the time. Sometimes the credit is deserved, sometimes not but since the public doesn't know the difference and rarely care, then we play the game. Tom's mistake is that he went too far. Firstly, he claimed credit for something that Charlie thinks of as his baby. Unwise, but a venial sin. The mortler was to go on radio and suggest that Brian Cowen was a waster who had delivered nothing to the bog constituency which they both share.
Most TDs are very slow to criticise constituency colleagues in public, even those from other parties. The punters don't like negative personal stuff and there are no votes in it.
So for a neophyte like Tom to publicly rubbish a bruiser like Brian was not only reckless but very stupid to boot. Tom's sensitive parts may be hurting following the frontal assault from McCreevy but his current pain will be as nothing by comparison to what might happen if he meets Cowen in a dark laneway after a public meeting in Birr.
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For the moment Brian has other things on his mind. There is the little matter of the future of Europe which will keep him away from the local this evening. Our guys in Brussels have more than a passing interest in what happens this weekend If Silvio Berlusconi and his neo-fascist friends can't pull off a deal then it will fall to Bertie and Brian to sort out the new constitution. With a little help from Dick Roche.
It was Dick's job to represent the Government at the convention and the preparatory stuff for the Intergovernmental Conference. And, in fairness, he made a decent fist of it. True, we have little at stake in terms of what are called "vital national interests" but nonetheless there was serious work to be done and Dick got stuck in and did it with commendable competence and commitment.
Dick is not without his detractors. His diuretic bumptiousness is sometimes entertaining but occasionally pompous. He does tend to go on a bit. But by and large Drapier is impressed. Certainly Dick is more than a little self-important but it is offset by a boyish affability and an obvious enthusiasm for his job.
Drapier is bothered about the whole European thing. Ever since Nice we have made huge efforts to deal with European issues more openly than before. We've had the Forum on Europe and the European Convention, both of them models of openness. We are all driven mad with the mound of European directives, which come before Dáil committees for scrutiny. Ministers are making a real effort to explain what they are up to in Brussels But the punters don't care. Worse, they are actively alienated by the whole process of endless treaty making. Drapier for one is not looking forward to hitting the doors in search of votes for the new constitution.
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Drapier felt strangely uncomfortable looking at the shambolic release of the Barron report and the coverage that followed.
The release of the report was ham-fisted. Journalists and relatives were corralled into the audio-visual room in Leinster House to be confronted with the massed ranks of the Justice Committee and treated to a speech by the normally assured chairman of the committee, Seán Ardagh. There weren't enough copies of the report to go around, and Seán handled the questions badly. Some of the relatives walked out and the whole thing felt like a stunt. But Drapier's discomfort goes beyond what happened this week. The bombings were terrible. The old black and white pictures are a painful reminder of an awful day, which ended the lives of many and scarred the lives of many more.
But it was an awful day in another time and we had many such days. Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, Enniskillen, Warrenpoint, Teebane Cross. It's a very, very long list.
A list of awful things that happened in the past. During the Troubles. During a time which we hope is over, a time we want to forget.
In the Dáil this week Gay Mitchell called for a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with past atrocities. The South African template is not entirely encouraging. True, the families of victims achieved a measure of closure and justice, but for many others the commission reopened wounds which had almost healed.
The relatives of the victims of past atrocities want justice. The rest of us are loath to deny them justice but we also want to move on and forget. Striking a fair balance is not easy. It may well be impossible.