Question: Has Micheβl Martin's luck run out? Answer: Maybe, but it was never about luck. Until September 11th, Micheβl Martin looked like the country's luckiest Minister for Health and Children.
He had been moved sideways to the Department ("promotion" is probably too strong a word for a portfolio which is for a politician what parachuting into Afghanistan is for a marine) in time to miss the ASTI dispute in his old Department, Education and Science.
He arrived in Health and Children too late to get caught up in the nurses' dispute - Brian Cowen had looked after all that.
He also arrived as money flowed into the health service from the Exchequer - Brian Cowen had looked after that too.
Suddenly talk of expansion in the health service was untrammelled. A thousand consultants would be hired, thousands of beds would be restored to the system and a couple of thousand more, by golly, would be added.
Even the Cabinet meeting at the Ballymascanlon Hotel, at which Charlie McCreevy seemed to pour cold water on Micheβl Martin's plans, did not hurt the charmed and charming minister.
When he subsequently appeared at conferences it was as the wounded hero. Our guy, health service workers seemed to feel, has been dealt a low blow by that other fellow but he's still our guy.
Today however, in the aftermath of the World Trade Centre outrage with negative news almost commonplace on the economic front, it seems fair to say that, yes, Micheβl Martin's luck probably has run out.
But then you look at the career, especially at the career in Cork, and you wonder if luck was ever more than a minor player in the story.
You could say it's luck, if you want to run for Fianna Fβil in Cork, to have had grandparents (the parents of his mother, Eileen Corbett), who were involved prominently in the War of Independence and in the Civil War on the republican side, and a father, Paddy Martin, who was an international boxer and a prominent sportsman in Cork.
Being educated at Scoil Chr∅ost R∅ and Colβiste Chr∅ost R∅ is no harm either: the schools turn out very, very good GAA players (all the famous hurlers came out of Chr∅ost R∅, he once modestly told The Irish Times) and gave the young Micheβl Martin his first education in political debate as the Fianna Fβil and Fine Gael teams squared up to each other in the classroom.
But hard work played a huge part in the career too. There is a Micheβl Martin newsletter in an Irish Times file dating back to the days when he was a councillor. It isn't the usual old tosh one would expect, given its genre. It's a four-page, closely argued and tightly written outline of policy issues in everything from science and technology to the development of the maritime sector. It's full of facts and figures and the thought of the amount of hard work that must have gone into it is exhausting in itself. Never mind that he was a teacher in St Kieran's College, Cork. He was also shop steward for the ASTI there at the time (yes, if things had worked out differently he might have been leading the strike) and that in itself is more than enough to occupy a person's time.
As Lord Mayor of Cork he is remembered for an ability to bring both the Fianna Fβil and Fine Gael factions on the corporation with him. There are those who say that a Fianna Fβil Lord Mayor who can get Fine Gael onside will have no difficulty at all dealing with the Cabinet, Mr McCreevy and the hospital consultants. He wasn't lucky when he first ran for the Dβil either: he got 3,600 votes and did not make it. That was in 1987. Two years later he ran again and was elected.
He made a remarkably strong impression as education spokesman for Fianna Fβil but the question, following a number of brilliant performances, was whether he would do as well in Government. He was duly appointed minister for education and became one of the country's most successful ministers in that role. In conversation, he is said to hark back to his days in Education the same way some people continually hark back fondly to their days in the Army.
Then came Health and Children which, he has said more than once, Bertie Ahern persuaded him "would be good for me." In Health and Children he finds himself charged with running a health service which nobody actually controls. Whatever you try to do in the health service there is somebody out there - a health board, the Medical Council, Comhairle na nOspidΘal, the unions, the voluntary hospital boards etc - who has a say and has to be consulted.
He has shown a good capacity to get down to business with these bodies, to get stuck into the nuts and bolts of what needs to be done and to talk them around to doing it. He has shown exasperation with the health boards who have stuck to their old ways of always assuring the minister that everything is all right, regardless. He felt misled by some of them about the shortage of junior doctors last year and he was hung out to dry by them on the issue of the famous iodine tablets which they told him they had when they hadn't. Do not expect him to let that go.
His other great strength, and the priority in his life, is his family. When it's family time at the weekend or on holidays he is inclined to let political and media storms rage around him without rushing to respond: the time with the family is too limited and too precious.
He and his wife Mary have three children, Micheβl Aodh, Aoibhe and Cillian. They have suffered the awful tragedy of the cot death of their son, Ruair∅.
His met his wife, Mary O'Shea, at University College Cork. She was Fianna Fβil national youth organiser but put aside her political career to rear her family. She is said, however, to eat, drink, sleep and breathe politics. Some, indeed, are fond of saying that she's the "real" politician in the family which seems a mite unfair to Micheβl.
There is nothing flash about the Martin family. They holiday every year in Courtmacsherry in west Cork. Playing with the kids and supporting Nemo Rangers hurling and football club are big interests of the minister - he was a member of the winning Under-21 County Championship teams in the early 1980s. He is no Flash Harry in the Health Department either. He does sensible, strategic things which are going to pay off hugely in the long run but which don't get anyone excited at the time. An example is the strategy - worked out by himself and his late adviser Gobnait O'Connell - to bring about partnership between management, unions and other power groups in the health services. If this can be done, change can be made to happen. It if can't, change will run into the sand.
It is this ability to tackle real, strategic issues in the health service which has won him admiration on all sides, together with a doubt as to whether he will have time to deliver.
The economic outlook may have darkened but Micheβl Martin has toughness, skill and a strategic mind with an appetite for detail, all wrapped up in charm. Who needs luck?
All next week, Irish Times correspondents and analysts will examine the health service here and elsewhere, highlighting the best and the worst. The series begins today in Weekend.