Seatbelts warning still holds as right's Rasputin turns legal

Never say never, now more than ever. It was one of those weeks in Irish politics when only cliches would do. Several years ago two prominent figures walked away from politics; one crushed by the electorate but professing to look forward to a private life; the other contemplating a wobbly seat while complaining of media intrusion.

This week the first is resurrected, Lazarus-like, to the centre of Irish political life without a vote to show for himself; while the other would be packing happily for one of the most public, high-powered jobs in European politics were it not, reportedly, for the PDs.

Michael McDowell and Maire Geoghegan-Quinn would doubtless agree with Lady Thatcher when she tearfully opined that politics is a funny old game. Funny in a ha-ha sense too, as one veteran put it this week, one of hundreds keenly anticipating the tensions as old sparring partners like McDowell and Brian Cowen get their feet under the same Cabinet table.

Never has so much old personal abuse been dug up and savoured by so many in so little time. Lest we forget, it was the current Minister for Health who once snarled, of the incoming Attorney General, that he was "not prepared to be lectured to by this right-wing Rasputin from the steps of the Four Courts".

Pat Rabbitte, another of McDowell's old sparring partners, and one of his few equals in that arena, naturally looks forward to the prospect of Mr Cowen glowering across the Cabinet table at the man who "from offstage, haunted and tortured Fianna Fail" during the 1989-92 FF-PD government. "Oh, yes," said another veteran, "I can see some Ministers looking over their shoulders and saying `Mother of God, or words to that effect, what's Banquo doing at the table?' ".

It's no secret that Michael McDowell has coveted that place for some time now. What is not so well known is how very close he came to getting it 10 years ago when the coalition deal between Fianna Fail and the PDs was being hammered out.

At one point a posse of PDs was fretting that they could wreck the deal by pushing for two full Cabinet places. The idea that they should settle for one and the Attorney General's job (for McDowell) became a serious runner even in the mind of Des O'Malley. In the end, however, Fianna Fail graciously handed the second seat to Bobby Molloy and the role of Banquo to Michael McDowell.

For a man who graced Irish politics for only a decade, never as a minister, and lost his seat twice in that time, Michael McDowell has left an indelible mark.

"Rottweiler" may well be the kindest of the epithets attached to him (a title passed seamlessly to Mr Cowen, ironically). In the immortal words of C.J. Haughey, he was "the nastiest piece of goods that ever crawled into this House". Or as Pat Rabbitte puts it with mock gravity, "a guy who used to send children to bed crying at night after seeing him on the television with his Himmler glasses and views on how society should be organised".

And that was just the opposition. A party colleague can well understand why some people might have found him scary, "with that tight haircut, the glasses, the glare, that business of going for the jugular and taking no prisoners . . ."

After all, here was a man who suddenly fetched up with the PDs on the day of their formation, with a reputation for having been "mean" to Garret FitzGerald while chairing the latter's constituency meetings, and for having left Fine Gael because Garret had turned into a woolly old leftie. Indeed, even the colleague perceived McDowell's politics then to have been a little more right of centre than was comfortable for many in the new party.

But McDowell, unlike many of his generation, at least remained consistent. UCD contemporaries still recall the highly exasperating double act of McDowell and Adrian Hardiman as cocksure, horrifyingly articulate, right-wing first-years in 1969 turning up (McDowell on one occasion in his FCA uniform) to pour scorn on their leftie elders busy trying to foment a revolution.

THE youngest son of a barrister, he achieved success early, being called to the Bar in 1974 and becoming a senior counsel in 1987 at the age of 36, the same year he won a seat in the Dail. He was a young man in a hurry, fearless, direct, with a formidable intellect and not a lot of political allies. Some perceived him as a fellow who had lived a sheltered, comfortable existence, a member of the elite who felt themselves entitled to lead, a typical of the Law Library as one senior Fine Gael TD put it this week, "uppity, uptight, unable to accept criticism, used to asking all the questions and never being answered back".

One Fianna Fail TD summed up what he perceived to be McDowell's problem in 1987: "He would have no understanding of what makes the ordinary Irishman tick, or thick, for that matter." Or as one old enemy, no shrinking violet, put it acidly this week: "When people are perfect, it's very hard for them to understand human frailty."

But when the guns were turned on McDowell himself in his capacity as a junior barrister, via a Dail question about the absence of State counsel at a Cavan rape case, no one could have been more "thick", in the words of one of those involved. His explanation to the Dail left his professional behaviour beyond reproach (he had been excused to attend a funeral), but it was an eye-opener for the young man just recently arrived in the Dail, naively expecting something like solidarity from the very people whom he routinely lashed.

This, after all, is the man who has made it difficult to look at Gay Mitchell (whose brother Jim is also a TD) without recalling the McDowell description of him as "the evil of two lessers". And just to prove that he wasn't fussy about which party he wanted to insult, he also became the man who declared Dick Spring "morally brain-dead". This was in response to Spring's conclusion that there was nothing untoward in the Masri file relating to the passports-for-sale scheme in which money from the scheme wound up in Albert Reynolds's company.

"There was nothing wrong with the file, or the file that I saw anyway", said Spring this week with the insouciance of a man well out of it. "Sure, he can go look at the file himself now anyway."

It was a Bill drafted by McDowell (with the collusion of Pat Rabbitte) that flushed out the details of that affair and which in Rabbitte's words "almost dislodged Dick Spring and the Labour Party at the time." It may be wishful thinking, but Rabbitte believes this has added relevance now, "in that the man who forced that affair into the open, an affair which subsequently had a profound impact on the longevity of that government, will now be the new Attorney General, sitting in a Fianna Fail-dominated Government."

No one, not even his worst enemies, doubts the new AG's formidable intellect, professionalism or integrity. The only weapon of any use to the Opposition is to focus on how this man of independent mind, direct and trenchant views will interact with his new colleagues. "What's the major issue the Government is going to have to deal with in the autumn, and the one they're going to need the most cute-hoorish approach to?" asked one. "Abortion, of course. And can you imagine McDowell going along with anything like that?"

His repeated view of the new job, "policy is for ministers, I am here to help", drew some wry smiles. "To which I would answer `Fasten your seatbelts'," says Pat Rabbitte. "He has no tolerance of fools, and I think he'll find it difficult to restrain himself in a Cabinet not noted for many political heavyweights."

On the other hand, says a colleague, it's hardly in his interest to be "the shortest-serving AG in living memory. He could well be an important balancing factor when Mary Harney gets a bit wobbly at the smell coming from the tribunals." And even those who gleefully anticipate the "glowers" between himself and old enemies across the table, acknowledge his affability, sense of fun, wit and charm.

Few remain immune from these - "He's deeply stimulating even when he's being a pain in the ass," said one - and the view from one ditch is that if all else fails, a couple of his famously irreverent comments will have them falling around laughing. His new colleagues might also bear in mind the fact that he's not a man to nurse a grudge.

FINALLY, lest there be any doubt about it, the consensus is that Michael McDowell has most definitely mellowed. No one would go so far as to accuse the Rottweiler of turning into a Golden Labrador (as he himself claimed a couple of years ago) but Pat Rabbitte for one is in no doubt that he has softened his act and has no doubt as to why.

"It's since his interaction with the political classes in Leinster House. Before he joined us, he was up there on the high moral ground with a very severe view of human nature. But having interacted with us for a decade and had his savage indignation over public spending and monetarist views confronted by somebody like me, representing a working-class constituency where some people were living hand to mouth, he had begun to see that there is a section of society less gifted and lucky than he. And that if you looked hard enough, you could detect the faintest glimmer of merit in other peoples' argument."

That may be so, but it may also have had something to do with rejection by the electorate the first time round, a deeply humbling experience, particularly for someone who had never known failure.

But, as one TD points out with some justification, our perception of McDowell's mellowing may also have something in it of the child who at 18 is appalled at her parents' ignorance but at 21 is astonished at how much they've learnt in the meantime.

Ten years ago McDowell's views on privatisation, for example, would have been dismissed as Thatcherite and an attempt to flog the family silver. "This week, as our State-owned telecommunications company is sold off", says the TD, "the front pages were full of stuff about half a million subscribers and not a mention of Thatcher or family silver".

Meanwhile, Michael McDowell displays all the traits of a rounded man, husband and father, who brings the children swimming and can often be seen driving them up to Scoil Bhride, an all-Irish school a few hundred yards from his Ranelagh home, in the mornings.

His own cupla focal are trotted out with more enthusiasm than any natural ability while his dutiful daily jogs around the neighbourhood are conducted without much evidence of either. A further example of his connection to ordinary folk's discourse was evident in a pop culture questionnaire he answered for Today FM's Sunday Supplement, a triumph according to one who heard it.

Back in Kildare Street, like many an acid-tongued character before him, his re-emergence has reminded some of what they've lost. "I miss him at the House", says Pat Rabbitte. "The truth is that in an adversarial parliamentary debate you need a guy like McDowell."