I WAS listening to a light hearted conversation about the next President. "I want Danoli," someone said. But I'm quite humourless on this subject. I've gone all idealistic about the Presidency. I really want, for example, that whoever is the next President of Ireland should be able to speak Irish.
Or, at the least, be committed to learning enough Irish to pay due respect to the language. We wouldn't go overseas to look for a President. We wouldn't invite in some latter day Strongbow. I want a President to be native so as many aspects as possible of this, Irish, culture.
Of course, I never bothered having any requirements before. Any candidate half way presentable used to do me. But now I feel able to ask what is it that we need in a President? And it seems to me that we are set to enter, over the next seven, years, into a bland internationalism and I'd like the next President to counteract that tendency.
But personal style is only one thing we'll be choosing when we choose a President. We'll also make judgments about competence in at least three areas. One is in representing us at diplomatic and ceremonial level at home and abroad - a job so achingly boring, in my opinion, as to drive most people to strong drink (thus disqualifying them from the office, though I don't see why our President shouldn't get drunk once in a while).
Then there's the other end of that spectrum: opening community centres, launching little cooperative enterprises, listening to speeches of welcome from brilliantined county councillors. The tea and apple tart circuit.
Then there's part three: handling the President's politico legal role. And this requires canniness of a rare order to prevent the Presidency becoming an outpost of this or that political establishment.
The one type of person who knows how to handle politicians is an ex politician. But this is no great reason for having an ex politician in the job. The only reason we've had so many ex politicians in the Park is because the political parties have a monopoly on putting forward Presidential candidates.
And there are cogent reasons for having anyone except an ex politician in the job. The political parties had better watch out. They think they can go back to owning the Presidency and dishing it out among their own. But they can't.
When people talk of who they'd like for President, politicians are hardly mentioned. There will have to be a better reason than their services to party for us even to be asked to consider such and such a candidate. A Presidential argument will have to be made even for people as perfectly presentable as, say, David and Annette Andrews.
PRESENTABLE (and Fianna Fail) isn't enough. Still less will it be thought enough if a party is seen to run someone for electoral as well as party advantage. If it is true, for instance, that the Ceann Comhairle, Sean Treacy, was approached by Labour, because it has hopes of a Tipperary seat, then Labour has slipped back into old, pre Robinson, ways.
Presentable as Mr Treacy of course is, he has no special claim on the affections of the electorate. Not to mention that he is in his 70s, and it is possible that being an elderly male does not now carry the automatic status it once did.
And if it were gravitas alone that mattered, then others besides politicians possess it: Dr T.K. Whitaker, for instance, does. John de Courcy Ireland does. P.J. Moriarty does. And several more, female as well as male. Miriam Hederman O'Brien deserves at least consideration by way of an apology for the way the establishment treated her in the contaminated blood affair.
If we do have to choose between ex politicians, there are candidates that bespeak somewhat less of barefaced opportunism than others. Michael D. Higgins, for instance, is a visionary as well as a shrewd operator. Or the late John Kelly of Fine Gael would have made a really capable President.
But at the moment people are revealing hopes of a wider and wilder sort. The most far out of these both involve Derry men. One is John Hume. We'll see it said, no doubt, that John Hume would symbolically unite the island of Ireland.
This is not true. He is certainly the face of constitutional nationalism. But it is still nationalism and the implicit territorial porousness of the two parts of Ireland would infuriate unionists if he were persuaded to run. But though he might be able to endure the diplomatic bit - he's a veteran of endless meetings and dinners, after all - he hasn't much experience with Robinsonian empowerment.
And as for Seamus Heaney, it would be quite wonderful to have him and Marie Heaney in Aras an Uachtarain and there's no part of the job that between them they could not do. But unfortunately, the people who say, "sure, couldn't he write his poems above in the Park as good as anywhere else?" do not comprehend the poetic vocation.
WELL, what about Tony O'Reilly, a very well placed source said to me? His charm and competence are beyond question. But if - and why not - the spotlight plays on the world of business, then what about someone whose chosen arena has been closer to home?
Martin Naughton's company, Glen Dimplex, had sales of £500 million last year. That's an Irish company, built up from very little. Carmel Naughton gives her time to the National Gallery and Co operation North. They're a cultivated, public spirited, dynamic couple and Carmel. Naughton for one speaks Irish, as I happen to know because I was at school with her and her sisters.
Isn't it a poor system when people like those are not considered, simply because they have served the State in ways other than going into politics? Outside business, what about Patrick and Frankie Masterson, now gracing the European University in Florence after years at UCD? What about Provost Tom Mitchell of Trinity? Has he completed his task there? What about Tom and Rosaleen Hardiman?
What about one of the people who have kept the Gospel alive in our culture - Sister Stanislaus, for example? She could run General Motors, never mind the Presidency of Ireland. And if the office of President is held by a single person, the staffing will simply have to change to accommodate that. (Some day, also, by the way, it will be held by a gay person, and let us hope that he or she will be as engaging as Senator David Norris.) What about a national heroine, like Adi Roche?
This is the time to use our imaginations. Take some of the behind the scenes discussion out of the politicians' hands. I know it is not their fault that there's only one Mary Robinson. But it will be their fault if we end up as if Mary Robinson had never happened at all.