The Taoiseach put Mary Coughlan into a job she cannot do, and he has not got the courage to remove her from it, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
POOR BERNARD Dunne. His defeat on Saturday in the WBA super-bantamweight title fight was a terrible spectacle. To see him stagger, and to see him fighting the stagger. To see him leaning on the ropes after that first fatal left hook, trying to get his head clear.
The cheerful ruthlessness of Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym, and of his short punches. Dunne realising that his legs would not hold him and then, a split second later, falling to the ground for the last time.
Someone took his gumshield out of his mouth as he lay on the canvass, suddenly an old man.
All of this occurred in round three. The O2 Arena, according to reports yesterday, went quiet.
Poor Mary Coughlan, politics makes boxing look like a lovely way to spend your time. Everywhere Mary Coughlan’s political death is predicted, her intelligence questioned, her competence scorned. Her family and friends are getting upset, she says, over the criticism she has been subjected to. And who can blame them?
Mary Coughlan has become that dangerous thing, a talking point. Last week – in real life, as opposed to in the newspapers and on the radio and television – people spoke about her without stopping, and they had so much to say that it hardly mattered what they said. Everybody has an opinion on Mary Coughlan.
Quite a lot of people had heard that she was a charming person; although some people had heard the opposite. One person (a woman) said that Mary Coughlan was an embarrassment to women, although we draw the line pretty firmly at that one, on the grounds that in the matter of various humans being an embarrassment to their sex women have a lot of catching up to do.
Actually Mary Coughlan looks like the sort of hearty, plain-speaking woman that other women rather like, while at the same time finding quite frightening. She’s the type of woman that men call a good sport, a great girl, and adore. You know where you are with Mary, she never got above herself. Her good-humoured reaction in the Dáil to Enda Kenny’s teasing about her tangerine suit showed that she possesses that quality most vital to survival in Irish life : Mary can take a slagging, no problem.
She is also, to rehearse the cliche once again, totally loyal to her boss, and he is loyal to her. In this society at the moment any virtue comes as a surprise, but loyalty can be made too much of. Brian Cowen put Mary Coughlan into a job she cannot do, and he has not got the courage to remove her from it. Far from being a sign of his loyalty to her this does her no favours.
In fact, it is what they have in common that makes the team of Brian and Mary so damn frightening. They haven’t an idea between them, but sure they’ll always give you the bar of an old song. No wonder they are bewildered. They were not made for times such as these – but then which of us was?
Failing in public is tough, as those of us who have failed on the lower levels can recall. Who is going to turn down the offer of a great job for the teensy weensy reason that you cannot do it? No one, is who. Everyone is incompetent, to a greater or lesser degree, when they take on a job. Mary Coughlan is a politician, she’s gutsy, she ain’t shy.
She was never going to turn down the job of deputy prime minister, for goodness’ sake.
Now it has emerged that she cannot do it. If Brian Cowen really cared about her, he would get her out of there before she damages herself further.
To those of us who know nothing about boxing Bernard Dunne’s defeat came as a horrible shock. But, apparently, Poonsawat is well known for this style of lethal fighting. Just a little hint here: Poonsawat’s nickname is Little Tank. He came to Dublin having won 38 of his fights, and lost one.
In the excellent post-match analysis on RTÉ 2, the boxing experts said that Poonsawat is so terrifying that all the relevant boxers have been avoiding fighting him for quite some time. So his annihilation of Dunne was not exactly a bolt from the blue. We had just become hypnotised with our own talk. Then reality, and Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym, came crashing in.
Bernard Dunne is a very popular person with the general public. He had wanted, he said on Saturday night after his defeat, to provide a bit of a lift for Irish people in general and for Irish boxing in particular. Instead he broke our hearts, and possibly ended his own career.
Mary Coughlan is not a very popular person with the general public, at the moment. The spectacle of her on the ropes is distracting us from the role of her boss in the continuing disaster of national bankruptcy.
It is also distracting us from the senior civil servants who are in her corner and should be protecting her – and, by the way, us. But of course senior civil servants never get in the ring.