Brushes with controversy nothing new to McCreevy

The Minister for Finance is again playing the role of sacrificial goat. The brickbats are coming thick and fast as Opposition and Government TDs and Senators take exception to his nomination of Hugh O'Flaherty - a man whose actions made him unsuitable to remain in the Supreme Court last year - to a plum EU job.

But, as Mr McCreevy shouldered the public odium, the Coalition Government's engines were still going full ahead. Ministers agreed in Cabinet that the O'Flaherty nomination must stand, in spite of serious public disquiet. Mary Harney and Bobby Molloy were in the loop with Fianna Fail, deaf to angry Progressive Democrat noises offstage. It was a case of "batten down the hatches" and let it rip.

Mr O'Flahery was waiting until the big job was in the bag. But he engaged in a neat piece of window-dressing by advising Mr McCreevy that he would forgo a £40,000 State pension in favour of a £147,000 annual salary for the four-year job at the European Investment Bank. There was no question, however, that the Sheedy affair would be revisited.

The two issues had to be kept strictly separate: Mr O'Flaherty's technical fitness for the new job and his unacceptable behaviour in the last one. Mr McCreevy had airbrushed the Sheedy affair from the press release that sprang the nomination on an astonished public. So the facade had to be maintained. Talk about his qualifications. Minimise his fall from grace.

In that regard, Mr McCreevy's failure to distinguish threatening danger had been akin to Nelson's behaviour with his telescope. A job had to be done. And, in spite of political risk, he would do it. Even the way it was done was odd. Agreement for the nomination was secured through a ring-around of senior Ministers, rather than across the table at Cabinet, where alarm bells might have rung.

Criticism by Fianna Fail backbenchers was muted compared to their response to the individualisation of tax bands last December. On that occasion, more than 20 Fianna Fail TDs trooped on to the plinth at Leinster House and voiced their dissent, with a nod and a wink from the party leadership.

This time, space was also made for ministerial bloodletting. But its shedding was confined to the Independent TDs supporting the Government and to the odd Progressive Democrat and Fianna Fail rebel.

The mechanism to allow the venting of pressure and to preserve the cohesion of Government emerged at Cabinet. It was a neat move. Rather than ask the Dail to approve the nomination of Mr O'Flaherty to the European Investment Bank - and risk losing the vote - Ministers came up with a formula that merely asked TDs to "note" his nomination. Out went the Fine Gael motion of censure; in came the Government's amendment to "note" the nomination. That way, Independent TDs and others could complain bitterly about Mr McCreevy's decision and still support the Government.

One way or another, however, Mr McCreevy was going to get it in the neck. But, as any racegoer knows, the Minister has no weakness in that department. So he stood and took it: the sole originator and executor of the notion that Hugh O'Flaherty was a fitting representative of this State for the board of the European Investment Bank.

The whole Sheedy/O'Flaherty controversy was strange. It took six weeks for the case to be brought to the boil in a ferment of public criticism. And when three resignations flowed from a series of irregularities which led to a four-year prison sentence being reduced to one year for Mr Sheedy, the possibility of prosecuting those responsible was dismissed by Mr Zero Tolerance himself, John O'Donoghue.

Instead, with questions still unanswered, the Minister for Justice pushed special legislation through the Dail to provide generous pensions for the two retiring judges. That was last year, less than a month after the Government had publicly threatened to impeach Mr O'Flaherty if he did not resign. But it didn't stop there. According to a reliable Government source, the proposal to reward the erring Supreme Court judge with an EU Commissioner's salary has been in play for some months, even if Mr McCreevy's informal ring-around took place two weeks ago.

The key concern of Ministers and various handlers was to keep the controversy as far away from Bertie Ahern as possible. There was no question that a long-standing deal had been done with Mr O'Flaherty, they insisted, and the Taoiseach had certainly not been involved. It had all been Mr McCreevy's idea.

IT cut no ice with Fine Gael. Jim Higgins believed the nomination had been a "done deal" from the time Mr O'Flaherty threatened to cause a constitutional crisis rather than resign. And he found it amazing that Mary Harney and her party were prepared to support a "most scandalous act of political patronage and nepotism".

Michael Noonan sang from the same hymn sheet as he put the boot into the Progressive Democrats. It was a wonderful opportunity to skin the junior party in Government. And the Limerick TD took pleasure in it.

Ruairi Quinn believed Mr McCreevy had started with a candidate and searched for a job, rather than the other way around. And then Bertie Ahern swam into his sights. The Labour leader said the debate was really about the kind of Government the Taoiseach presided over. He had seen some "strokes" in his time, but this was about the worst. Politics had been brought into disrepute.

Brendan Howlin added to the conspiracy frenzy when he revealed that no documentation existed in the Department of Justice involving the special pension negotiations between the Government and the two judges. It appeared that all negotiations had been conducted by telephone. It was bizarre. Worse, it defied belief.

Even as the Opposition parties raised howls of outrage, the Government proceeded on course. Mr O'Flaherty was to receive his EU nomination come hell or high water.