There was a sigh of relief in Leinster House that Mary O'Rourke was in her bath at 7 a.m. last Tuesday and not in the shower. If she had been in the shower she would not have heard the 7 o'clock news and she would not have known of Brian Joyce's resignation as chairman of CIE until she arrived at her office for her scheduled 8 a.m. meeting with him.
The shock to Mary's system would have been too great if that had happened.
Speculation is also rife that if she had not had that extra hour's warning, it would have been more difficult to organise the counter-spin of releasing a report on rail safety, which diverted attention from the significance of Mr Joyce's resignation.
He said he resigned because of consistent interference by the Minister in the internal affairs of CIE. Every time the management tried to manage, she apparently intervened on the unions' side and diminished any likelihood that CIE could be managed out of its perennial difficulties.
It remains a fundamentally sick organisation with low morale afflicting the management just as much as the ordinary workers.
Whoever fills the vacant chair at CIE will know that he or she is doing so on Mary O'Rourke's terms. That is a pretty daunting prospect.
Her performance in the House later that day reinforced her image as a rather domineering schoolmistress. She insists on treating those who clash with her, in the House or outside, as if they were children in a classroom.
Her excessive self-confidence causes her to lose control and her depiction of Brian Joyce as a coward who was afraid to face her is a travesty of the truth in relation to a man who was conscientious in trying to carry out onerous duties of great public importance for the past five years.
Ms O'Rourke's attitude, and her intemperate remarks, must send shivers of foreboding throughout various other semi-State bodies, both at board and management levels.
She has responsibility for more semi-State bodies than any other Minister and for more commercial semi-State bodies than all other Ministers combined, but appears to have little grasp of the sort of relationship that should exist between a minister and the various bodies under her aegis.
Her dictatorial attitude must cause special concern to those who are shortly to face privatisation.
The bottom line is that it will be done Mary O'Rourke's way or not at all. Whether that will appeal to the market remains to be seen.
It is not surprising that at least one chief executive decided to depart at a few days' notice rather than face the rigours of privatisation under the heavy hand of Ms O'Rourke. Her idea of partial or minority flotation seems especially inappropriate now that her true colours have been publicly seen. To other matters. Jonathan Philbin Bowman met a most untimely end at the age of 31, and there was genuine sorrow on all sides of the House for one of the most unusual, but basically well-loved, journalists in the country. Jonathan's eccentricities were at times very exasperating but he was completely lacking in malice.
He was genuinely innocent, even as an adult, as his father remarked. His most malicious acts were conceived in a sense of fun and rarely, if ever, hurt.
How especially tragic it was for a young man who abhorred violence and was totally pacifist that he should have been mugged on the street twice within two months before his death, once in the United States and once in Dublin. It is difficult to think of anyone who less deserved to have violence inflicted on him.
The reaction of many men to Jonathan, until they got to know him, was one of exasperation or annoyance. Women were different. They revered him. Older women wanted to mother him and the real grief on the faces of so many women at his memorial service in Donnybrook Church was evident to all.
That fact was remarked on by his father, John, who expressed amazement at the number of times he was hugged by attractive women he did not know. At that poignant event in Donnybrook the courage and dignity of Jonathan's parents and siblings shone through.
John Bowman's appreciation of his son, delivered in the most agonising of circumstances, was an extraordinary expression of love, tolerance and pride. In what, for any father, must have been a situation of the ultimate horror, John Bowman's incredible professionalism and polish saw him through with flying colours.
His good-humoured courage in such dreadful circumstances was inspirational to his listeners. It is hard to imagine someone so exuberant and so much a man about town as a parent himself. But Jonathan's generous affection for, and care of, his son Saul was itself quite remarkable.
Rarely can such a young man have had such a profound influence for the good on many people, even if for some he was something of an acquired taste and took some getting to know.
The loss of such a talented 31-year-old would in any event be extraordinarily sad. His passing in such a tragic way compounded the grief that was so widely shared.
Dublin has certainly lost one of its greatest characters, but Drapier hopes that the many happy memories will sustain his stricken family at this awful time.