I HAVEN’T seen the charge formally levelled against him yet anywhere. But it seems to me that what John O’Donoghue stands accused of, fundamentally, is that on a specified number of dates between about 2005 and 2009, he did, knowingly or unknowingly, individually or in concert with others, lose the run of himself.
This is not a crime in Ireland, or even a misdemeanour. There is no specified punishment upon conviction. It’s not even stamped on your driving licence. But it’s a very serious matter for all that. To be judged to have lost the run of oneself is not something any Irish person, especially a politician, wants on his record.
That said, it’s rather hard to define what exactly losing the run of yourself means. There are no Department of Finance guidelines a person can claim to have stayed within, for example. In fact, you only ever hear of the phrase in the negative.
Then it implies a certain loss of centre, an excessive distancing from one’s roots, or in extreme cases from reality. Whereas, great as the shame of losing it is, being in possession of the run of yourself is apparently not worthy of comment, except posthumously (see below).
The run of yourself is a bit like traditional music. That is not defined anywhere either. But whereas decisions on whether a tune is traditional or not are the preserve of bearded holy men who meet at the Fleadh Ceoil every year to discuss such matters, the question of whether your neighbour or a public figure has lost the run of himself is a matter for anyone and everyone who has an opinion.
There will never be a shortage of volunteers for jury duty. And once a guilty verdict is arrived at, it’s almost impossible to overturn. You can certainly appeal, but it’s a messy and protracted process.
In the absence of an Irish honours system, to be deemed never to have never lost the run of yourself is the nearest thing we have to knighthood. The big drawback is that, while a person remains alive, it can only be an interim judgment. Of necessity, permanent conferring of the title is nearly always posthumous.
Thus, earlier this year, the late Frank McCourt was awarded the honour by his fellow Irish-American Niall O’Dowd. “The greatest tribute I can pay to Frank McCourt is that he never lost the run of himself,” said O’Dowd, neatly summing up both the tribute and its recipient.
An exception to the rule was former taoiseach Jack Lynch, whose experience as one of the GAA's great midfielders left him uniquely and permanently centred. He was conferred while still living, back in 1984. If I recall correctly, the ceremony was carried out by Con Houlihan, who wrote in the Evening Press: "Jack Lynch is a man who never lost the run of himself".
Never mind the KBE or the Papal Knighthood. The NLROH is the most prestigious set of letters you can have after your name in this country. And yet I cannot for the life of me discover where the phrase originated. It sounds quintessentially Irish.
But it could well be one of those terms – like “the crack” – that was born and reared in England before it crossed the sea and, finding its talents more appreciated here, went native.
The “run” is a vital component of England’s national game, after all. And just about the worst thing you can do in cricket is to be “run out”, which has a similar meaning. Then you can’t blame a good ball or a bad pitch. To be run out at the very least implies a sense of disorientation that you brought upon yourself. At worst, it means you threw your wicket away in a crass error of judgment.
I doubt if John O’Donoghue has ever played cricket, so he hardly knows much about running between wickets (and when he was Minister for Sport, somebody would surely have ordered him a car). But he now has the look of a batsman caught out of his ground, suddenly, when changing conditions in the outfield caused the ball to come back earlier than expected.
SPEAKING OF METAPHORS, there is a poignancy in the fact that the latest (at time of writing) extravagance with which the Ceann Comhairle has been assailed was the €950-a-night hotel room he stayed in for the 2006 English Grand National.
That race arguably marked the high-point of the property boom, won as it was by an Irish horse – Numbersixvalverde — named after a builder’s holiday home in Portugal. It was some time around then that Bertie Ahern announced: “The boom is getting boomer.” But of course we know now it was more a case that it was going “boomerang”, and it has been causing mayhem on the way back: hitting people, like the Ceann Comhairle, who didn’t duck in time.
The other memorable thing about that race was the winning jockey, Niall “Slippers” Madden: so-named to differentiate him from his father, Niall “Boots” Madden. It seemed symbolic of all sorts of things at the height of the Tiger years. Now it reminds us of those innocent times, suddenly so far away, when the consensus was that we were all in for a soft landing.