'What was he thinking?'

In appointing Celia Larkin to the board of the National Consumer Agency, the Taoiseach was inviting controversy, writes Liam …

In appointing Celia Larkin to the board of the National Consumer Agency, the Taoiseach was inviting controversy, writes Liam Reid.

Political news, in the dead heat of summer, acts in a very similar way to a gorse fire. A small blaze that might easily be dampened down at other times can erupt into a full-blown and uncontrollable forest fire during a dry spell.

For the Government last week, the appointment of Celia Larkin to the interim board of the National Consumer Agency was such an inferno.

With little else of a domestic political nature happening early in the week, news of her appointment quickly consumed whatever political oxygen there was, and within hours had erupted into a major controversy.

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There was little doubt among many in Fianna Fáil that the timing, if not the appointment itself, was an error, made all the worse by the fact it was so avoidable.

"I was at a big Fianna Fáil funeral on Tuesday and all people were talking about was Celia, and they weren't defending it by any stretch," said one Fianna Fáil backbencher. "I mean, what possessed Bertie, what was he thinking?"

While there is nothing written in stone, a common practice has emerged where the Taoiseach has a droit de seigneur in relation to major State boards. He gets the opportunity to nominate at least one person to the board.

In the past this ensured that members of his close Drumcondra political circle, such as Chris Wall and Des Richardson, have received prestigious appointments to the board of Aer Lingus in the late 1990s. The appointment of Celia Larkin (who was not only his personal partner but a key political adviser for a considerable period of his career) to a State board was therefore in keeping with the political modus operandi of Bertie Ahern.

In his political life, he never cuts people off totally and usually attempts to keep all former political allies on side. The benefits of minimising the number of potential enemies is obvious. For example Cabinet Ministers never tend to be sacked, and are usually awarded some consolation prize, be it a junior ministry or chair of a committee.

WHATEVER THE MOTIVIATIONS behind Celia Larkin's appointment, its timing could not have been worse. Potentially controversial board appointments are usually included in a group of less controversial figures, and it would have been expected that Celia Larkin's appointment would have been made with the rest of the board on June 6th.

The Taoiseach was asked for a nominee at the end of May by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Apparently unaware that the announcement of the board was imminent, he failed to suggest a nomination by June 6th when names of the other board members were announced. It took until the end of June to provide a name to the department.

Celia Larkin was told in early July that she had been nominated to the board and last Monday an e-mail was sent to the other existing members that she was being appointed. Within hours word had leaked out to the media and the controversy was born.

To make matters worse the Government's media handlers had not been made aware of the appointment, and were therefore on the back foot from the outset in relation to the controversy.

With the Taoiseach away on a few days break, it was left to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, to defend the appointment in public, in the face of mounting criticism from every opposition party, including Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens.

The defence by Martin and the Taoiseach's spokespeople was that Larkin was a suitable appointment to a consumer agency. A former civil servant with two decades of experience who was now a small business owner, she had the right qualifications to sit on a body representing consumer interests, they argued.

While they were no doubt correct, the defence faced a problem in that the Consumers' Association, an independent body, had been complaining since June that it was not given a nomination on the body. While Eddie Hobbs, a member of the association, was on the board, it was in a personal capacity, the association had argued. It meant the controversy about Celia Larkin's appointment was difficult to shake.

The issue of State board appointments has been an ongoing controversy, with the Government in the past accused of cronyism.

"It's not what you know, it's who you know," as Green TD John Gormley put it last Tuesday.

Therefore the Taoiseach must have been aware that the appointment of Celia Larkin to a State board, especially one as sensitive and prominent as the new National Consumer Agency, was going to prompt a lot of comment and criticism.

According to some sources the Taoiseach was surprised by the level of controversy the appointment created. For some observers within his own party, the possibility that Bertie Ahern did not foresee the possible fallout is a worrying one. They would prefer to believe that the Taoiseach considered the appointment of Celia Larkin to a State board more important than the political flak it would bring on the Government and Fianna Fáil.

The alternative is that Bertie Ahern, one of the most astute politicians of his generation, is losing his touch.