I stayed in Dublin over the rainy bank holiday, and learned two very valuable lessons, writes Quentin Fottrell.
Rats have reportedly been running up Lansdowne Road, knapsacks on their backs, fleeing the demolition of the stadium they once called home, dodging the well-heeled residents. I don't mean to worry D4 residents about this or future developments (well, maybe I do) but, once rats find pay dirt, they repeat their behaviour ad nauseam. If they scavenge, they will return.
I've met a few rats in my time. In the little enclave of terraced houses on a less salubrious side of town we had a rat, a big fat one, due to nearby building work. But we soon knew its daily routine and waited for it, sprinkling rat poison in our flowerbeds and whistling Dixie on our stoops as we supped mugs of tea and leaned menacingly on our shovels.
But just when we got rid of one rat, a developer applied for planning permission to build apartments that threatened to cast us all into eternal darkness. My neighbours - some of whom were born there - organised a kitty and came out fighting. We won. But the request for planning permission has been nailed to the wall again . . . with a few minor alterations.
The lesson? Where people and rats are concerned, the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. Developers may shave off a balcony here or a floor there, but they always come back. When my neighbour knocked on my door and waved the council's letter, I could already see the writing on the wall behind her, slowly reappearing like magic ink.
That's why I didn't get the shock-and-awe in the media at Bertie Ahern's Seanad nominations. They were, if you look at the story so far, utterly predictable. Poor John Ellis, a former TD whose company owes thousands to local farmers in Leitrim? Tick! Poor Ivor Callely, a former minister of state forced to resign after it emerged one of the largest building firms in the State arranged for the painting of his house in the early 1990s? Tick!
Ahern appointed them, last term or not, because that's what he has always done. Lest we forget that of the 12 "friends" - a word that has never been so used and abused - who helped give him his infamous dig-out in the early 1990s, a handful were given plum positions on state boards in the subsequent years, including Jim Nugent, Pádraic O'Connor and Joe Burke.
Burke has also been reappointed as chairman of the Dublin Port Company for a second five-year term. (Congratulations, by the way.) In 2002, Michael McDowell complained that he wasn't consulted on Burke's appointment, but speculated that there must be an "innocent" explanation. That's a word for it. Ahern has tried to make a theatrical study of innocence.
Which brings me to The Big Houseat the Abbey. The pamphlet for Lennox Robinson's play, which hasn't been produced in 75 years, contained a strange line: "If you saw Ken Loach's film, The Wind That Shakes The Barleyor are interested in Irish history, you'll enjoy this wonderful period play that has found its time once again." I've been given such a personal recommendation only once before, on Amazon.com, which knows our own peccadilloes better than we do ourselves. "How very dare you!" I thought. "Just because a man orders Primo Levi or Doris Day doesn't mean . . ."
But I've never been given this marketing ploy at our National Theatre. I did see the Ken Loach film, as it happens, and I wasn't doing cartwheels after it. So, if I do use the Abbey and Amazon's formula for future behaviour, I could wait another 75 years before I see that play again. I've seen enough of those creaky old costume dramas at the Abbey to last a lifetime.
The lesson here? Where our cultural political history is concerned, we are constantly served up a diet of evil oppressors and cute hoors.
Fianna Fáil has appropriated this imagery for years, from Charlie Haughey, landlord of the Abbeville estate, to Bertie Ahern, one-time tenant in his modest semi-d estate in Drumcondra. It is as predictable as summer season in the Abbey.
Ahern could have honed his media skills there. But his performance is less "innocent" than a stock portrayal of gormlessness: the anti-Haughey in the anorak, who wasn't even sophisticamacated enough to have a bank account. Ahern blithely signed blank cheques for him. And yet there is still a collective gasp at the Mahon tribunal when his figures don't add up.
When those gasps turned serious, Haughey used to roar like a statesman, whereas Ahern bleats like a lovable, slightly barmy councillor.
The jokes about Haughey's Charvet shirts and about whether Ahern kept his money in a shoebox or a sock are theatrical red herrings. It turns their story into a comedy of manners where we boo and hiss or laugh, or both.
If Haughey was the boss in the big house, then Ahern is the humble valet who bowed and scraped his way to the top. If you alone consider the breadth of Ahern's latest cronyism, the dodgy dig-outs and question marks about his finances, Ahern has repeated much of the behaviour of his old master. But we elected them both, so we must now watch this latest act play itself out. To quote the Abbey's programme, if you voted for Haughey, you'll just love Bertie Ahern.
• Vincent Browneis on leave