INSIDE POLITICS - WILLIE O'DEA COLOUR

So concerned was the Government about feuds in Limerick last year that it sent down John Fitzgerald to sort it all out.

Well it seems that the former Dublin City Manager still has his work cut for him following the extraordinary altercation in South’s pub last weekend, involving the Wyatt Earp of Irish politics, Defence Minister Willie O’Dea.

Yesterday, O’Dea came out fighting (metaphorically of course) after being accused of being more belligerent than a Jack Russell defending its territory during his spat with two local people last Saturday night.

The Minister for Defence took an exception to a whole host of claims yesterday. He denied he used the ‘P’ word when politely enquiring of the identity of one of people involved in the argument. As in “Who is that P***k?”.

He also denied inviting the same man to step outside as he would like to hit him.
But what seemed to upset him most was the utterly outrageous and reprehensible claim that he was “working the tables” in the pub, currying favour and support from constituents.

Quickly reminding us that he got 19,000 votes in the last election (ie he is either amazingly popular or a megalomaniac) he sniffily suggested he did not need to work tables. Besides the pub was too crowded, he said.
And it also seemed he had also learned two of the Cardinal Rules that Bertie Ahern drew up to defend his reputation.

First of all, there was the expression of regret that expressed no regret whatsoever, just bitterness.

Did he regret anything?

No, he replied, before adding that the only thing he regretted was getting involved in the argument with them at all.

And then there was the Second Cardinal Rule, the scatter-gun defence, the use of multiple clarifications.

First of all, he said that he had used a phrase no stronger than ‘get lost’ to John Fahey and Geraldine Morrissey.

Yesterday he told Pat Kenny on RTE Radio that he may have said any one of the following: “Get lost, sod off or feck off”.

It was inevitable that this particular Gunfight at the OK Corral would win the moustachioed minister desperado status in the Dáil.

Enda Kenny mocked the “fighting face” of Willie O’Dea on the front page of yesterday’s Irish Examiner and referred to “bare knuckle” fighting. Ceann Comhairle, John O’Donoghue, himself a man not adverse to ferocious verbal hand-to-hand combat warned him that there would be no reruns of Rocky V in the chamber.

Brian Cowen, another man who uses brawling techniques when debating, had been drinking in the same pub in Limerick with O'Dea earlier that day. But it was Cowen the Cautious and not Cowen the Cavalier who showed up at the Dail yesterday. He blanked all the taunts and questions from the opposition when taking the Order of Business.

It was left to Michael D Higgins to ride to the rescue with the quotable quote of the day. “Willie O’Dea, my fight for Irish Freedom,” mused Michael D.

This is a version of a piece in the Irish Examiner today.
He should be awarded a medal!

INSIDE POLITICS - AER BLING-US

To lose one chief executive of Aer Lingus may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like callousness.

With apologies to Oscar Wilde, that’s what the Government fears most when it comes to the Shannon Airport mess.

When Willie O’Dea spoke about Armageddon it was about the loss of the Heathrow slots to the mid-west. When the Government thinks of Armageddon, it is a scenario when Dermot Mannion and his top management team walk after being compromised by the Government at an EGM.

Bertie Ahern’s view of Mannion’s predecessor Willie Walsh was jaundiced. It was prompted by what he regarded as Walsh’s audacious cheek at proposing a management buy-out. It got so bad that if Walsh said he was going for walk, Ahern would have gone out of his way to ensure it was along the length of a plank.

Six months later – by which time Walsh had been forced out and had gone to British Airways – you could see that the Anorak was still all ripped up about it.

When Pat Rabbitte asked Ahern in the Dail was he going to give the go-ahead to privatise the airline, the Taoiseach rounded on him, and – by proxy – Willie Walsh.

“I am surprised Deputy Rabbitte is taking up a position that was opposed by every trade unionist in Aer Lingus, when management wanted to steal the assets for themselves through a management buy out, shafting staff interests. Deputy Rabbitte is now defending that position.”

And a little later, he added as an afterthought.

“I am glad those individuals (Willie Walsh and co) went on to prove their worth in the financial marketplace but at least they did not do it by taking the assets away from Aer Lingus.”

Stirring stuff from Red Bertie the Socialist comrade. We were all able to sleep easy in our beds that night. The assets were protected. They had been safely anoraked by the Taoiseach in the Dail.

And then a year later, Aer Lingus was floated. Or about 60% of it was. The employes got about 12% through another ESOT. And the State kept 25.4% which Martin Cullen, the then Transport Minister, told us was a ‘golden share’.

So we still didn’t need to worry about losing the assets. I won’t bore you with the details of the tome Cullen produced last October detailing how that golden share, that magic 25.4%, that cast-iron safeguard against the tyranny of unfettered capitalism would protect Aer Lingus’s assets. And Cullen spelled out what those assets were: they were primarily the Heathrow slots and the services from Dublin, Cork and Shannon.

So what was the difference between Willie Walsh stealing the assets and the Government floating the airline on the private market while retaining a 25.4% ‘golden share’?

None really. Except we got loads of bluster and self-serving bombast from Government when it went down the second avenue.

The golden share! What an abominable business cliché. If Cullen had read his Shakespeare he would have known enough about things that glisten not to mention golden shares.

We learned, when it was sprung on us at the start of August, that pulling the Shannon to Heathrow service was against the Government’s regional and aviation policy and was a disappointment. Though Martin Cullen never told us back in October, the Government knew back then that there was damn all it could do about it. What’s more if Aer Lingus decided to transfer all the Heathrow slots out of Ireland, Bertie the Bystander would live up to his name. He couldn’t do anything about it. Nada. Nothing. And what’s worse, there would be no Willie Walsh to blame.

The Minister for Finance as the nominated Government shareholder could only call an EGM if Aer Lingus ‘disposed of’ (ie sold) the slots rather than transfer them. What’s more, it got advice this week from the Attorney General Paul Gallagher that even if a majority of shareholders ordered management to reverse the decision on Shannon, the service could not be saved at this stage.

The current Transport Minister Noel Dempsey arrived into his Ministry just in time to see that plane take off from the runway. Asked this week about the purpose of the ‘golden share’ he replied that it can help repel a hostile takeover (as happened when RyanAir began huffing and puffing) and will also help prevent the disposal of Heathrow slots.

However, he admitted that down the line all of the Irish slots could be transferred to Dusseldorf or Taipei or Abu Dhabi. He made the fair point that this was highly unlikely, given the sheer volume of air traffic between the two islands of Ireland and Britian. But the point is that, politically, it makes a mockery of the Government’s stern prose from last autumn. It was selling us a pig in a poke back then. And what was worse it knew it.

The following is wild and groundless speculation on my part. But one of the reasons I believe the Government will back Dermot Mannion to the hilt is that otherwise Bertie Ahern will be forced to back an aviation boss he dislikes even more intensely than Willie Walsh.

INSIDE POLITICS - WILLIE O'DEA AND SHANNON

You arrive back from your holidays to find that your home has been robbed. You go to the police station, where a bored sergeant with his heels on the desk twiddles his thumbs and tells you that there’s nothing that they can do about it, forget about it, and go home. You protest, but just as you’re building yourself into a froth of fury, the sergeant kicks you out the door. On the way home, you get mugged by a gang of hoodies who also give you a good kicking while you cower on the pavement. As you arrive home badly injured to your burgled house, your worried neighbour asks are you ok.

“Me,” you reply perkily, “I couldn’t be better.”

Such was the nature of Willie O’Dea’s reaction to what amounted to a public dressing down by Cabinet colleagues over Shannon.

The Minister for Defence professed himself “extremely pleased” with the outcome of yesterday’s marathon Cabinet discussion on Shannon, and, to boot, asked all the groups lobbying to retain the Shannon to Heathrow service to step back to allow the Government space to resolve the crisis.

But what is the resolution? Was the Government going to force Aer Lingus’s hand? Was it going to use the ‘golden share’ it so mercilessly hyped (reminds you of a sheep in wolf’s clothing) to force Dermot Mannion and his management buddies to back off? Was it going to abstain – or worse, still back Ryanair – in a vote if an Emergency General Meeting is held in October?

Erm, no. The Government yesterday said what it has been saying over the past month. The Aer Lingus decision is a done deal and it’s not going to be reversed. That means it’s not going to interfere with the decision. It also means (but this has yet to be teased out) that it won’t vote against the Aer Lingus management if Ryanair gets its way and forces an EGM on the Heathrow slots issue. It also means that it won’t even abstain.

If you can square Willie O’Dea’s earlier descriptions of ‘Armageddon’ and Shannon being ‘cut off from the rest of the world’ with yesterday’s ‘extremely pleased’ then you will have cracked the mystery that is Fianna Fail’s enduring ability to be for and against something at the same time.

All those empty stories of rebellion and cabinet splits came to naught. Eamon O Cuiv and John Gormley never questioned the agreed Government position, despite attempts by the Sunday Independent to paint them as rebels. And Willie O’Dea’s protests were always going to be more about form than substance.

All of the Government’s efforts will now be thrown into finding an alternative carrier to connect Shannon to an international hub. But talks with airlines are not as advanced as were reported this week. The Government knows that it will have a full-blown crisis on its hand if some alternative is not found – with a lot of the most pugnacious stuff coming from FF TDs and Senators in the region.

Politically too, the Government deserves to take a pasting for over-exaggerating the influence of the so-called ‘golden share’ last October. Never once was it mentioned during the Ryanair takeover battle that Shannon was in danger of losing its slots, even though the Transport Minister admitted yesterday that possibility was known at the time.

But since about August 12, its line has been clear. Dempsey even stood over his comments back then that some of the claimed impacts were “exaggerated”. He agreed yesterday it would have ‘some impact’ and the Government’s was discounting that. But he said that some people were talking about the lost of 10,000 jobs and 50,000 jobs and of the region being devastated.

“Overly stating the impact can do damage to the region. We do not want to create an impression that there is devastation (when there’s not),” he argued.

There were some scarier statements, he said. And what about the Armageddon envisaged by his Cabinet colleague Willie O’Dea.

“It applies to any of the scarier statement,” said Dempsey, lumping the Defence Minister with those who had exaggerated.

No wonder he was extremely pleased yesterday.

INSIDE POLITICS - OD of O'Dea

It was the dog that didn’t bark who decided it at the end of the day.

A bit like the plot-line of the Hound of the Baskervilles, we were all listening to the wrong dogs barking up the wrong trees.

Over the past week, it was all Willie O’Dea putting on his own end-of-the-pier act. Roll-up! Roll-up! Watch the Minister for Defence in his all new rage and fury show. You think Gordon Brown’s four-hour holiday was self sacrifice? Witness an Irish Government minister who has defied human nature by not taking a holiday for a full two years. Marvel as he builds himself into such a tornado of outrage that he self-immolates before your very eyes.

And, politically, that’s more or less what happened.

As a colleague acidly put it on Thursday: “Willie went one Morning Ireland too far.”
We have not heard a peep out of Bertie Ahern since the controversy first erupted ten days ago. Actually for almost a week, it seemed that the entire Cabinet had become anchorites, with Government Buildings shrouded in a monastic silence.

That was, until Willie O’Dea arrived back from the first holiday he had taken for a full two years. And from there on in, we got a spectacular full-on Broadway production – a chorus line of 100 councillors and co-starring roles for half a dozen local TDs and two junior ministers. But there was only one star.

The Minister for Defence gave a bravura performance of defiance and bluster all week. So much so that you kind of suspected that he was beginning to believe in his own invincibility. He would force, erm, persuade Aer Lingus of the errors of its ways. He spoke of an Armageddon scenario, of the mid-west of Ireland being cut off from the rest of the world because of the loss of Heathrow. Seriously, cut off from the rest of the world.

In his only substantial comments on the controversy, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey said he agreed with Dermot Mannion that some of the claims being made about the downside of the Aer Lingus decision were exaggerated.

On Morning Ireland, Willie responded to that in this manner: “(Noel Dempsey) is taking his own advice. In this situation unfortunately that advice does not convey the seriousness of the situation here.”

That was a blooper if ever there was one. The comments served to undermine Dempsey and his authority. O’Dea had clearly overstepped the mark.

And still the dog didn’t bark. Bertie Ahern (still on holidays but apparently working away behind the scenes) said nothing.

But then on Thursday evening, a statement was issued in the name of Education Minister Mary Hanafin. In the second paragraph, it noted that she was “speaking on behalf of the Government”.

The key line came in the next paragraph: “As a listed plc, Aer Lingus has to take its own decisions. It is inappropriate for the Government to intervene in the decision-making of a private company.”

That was it. It was over. Bertie Ahern had not uttered one syllable in ten days. But the mark of the Anorak was all over the statement. O’Dea was now being put firmly in his place. Two of Ahern’s most senior loyalists, Mary Hanafin and Dermot Ahern, were wheeled out to repeat the Government line. Aer Lingus has made its decision and that decision is would stand.

It was the one act of decisiveness by a Government in a fortnight of mess and blunder. At least, Aer Lingus chief executive Dermot Mannion knew where he stood before meeting local politicians and business leaders and knew it wasn’t a case of the Government showing him the door, as it did with Willie Walsh.

The stance will be politically unpopular (and that’s as mild an assessment as possible). Ahern and Cabinet ministers will have a rough passage through meetings with its own representatives from the region.

But at the same time you have to also question Willie O’Dea’s judgement. Is he or isn’t he a member of the Cabinet and answerable to collective responsibility? As a Minister, he was party to the decision to privatise Aer Lingus and should be brave enough to live with the consequences (despite what he said this week, the airline did not need to be privatised to raise the funds for fleet replacement). And O’Dea has put local interest above national interest on every occasion – on the deregulation of taxis; on Barrington’s hospital and frequently on Shannon. Other ministers like Dempsey (with an incinerator in Meath) and Micheal Martin (over Cork Airport) have been prepared to take the heat that goes with being a Minister.

And the dog might not have barked this week. But boy, did it still have a fierce bite.

This is my column from today's Irish Examiner

Inside Politics - Willie O'Dea and the Original Sin(do)

Dan Sullivan has posed a couple of very pointed and searchign questions about Willie O'Dea's second career (that of a newspaper hack) on his blog. He says they have been unanswered by Willie's own profession (his fellow journalists, of course). The following is a long quote from Dan's website. Now read on ...

"Unanswered (question) because it seems no one in the Dead Tree Press is asking them.

I was drawn a fortnight ago to the Minister of Defence Willie O’Dea's entry in the register of Oireachtas members interest. The minister as many people will know has a weekly column in the Sunday Independent. Now, politicians writing the occasional column or making the odd television appearances is not uncommon nor should it be discouraged. However, a weekly column is a platform for promotion of his electoral chances much like any other piece of advertising and it suggests employment. So why is there no reference to this engagement in his return.

The absence to any reference to his column begs the following questions.

Is the minister actually employed on contract my Independent News and Media and is he paid the going rate for this column? – and why is this not listed on his return?

If not then does he pay a market rate for the advertising space he is being given to convey his political message to the public each week?

If not then this space is being given as a gift from Independent New and Media to the minister and why was it not noted as such on his return?

Those are the only real options.

A senior minister takes up an offer of assistance from a major commercial organisation. An offer that will assist his re-election chances and he then doesn’t declare it in his entry of the register of Oireachtas members’ interests. You would think that this would be headline news, right? Well, while we’ve had the usual prurient interest in who owns how many houses and perhaps the exotic shareholders of some Oireachtas members, there are been no mention of this cosy relationship."

Willie does seem to have a special status with the Sindo, one that has been ongoing as long as I have been in journalism. Ministers (or to be accurate, their civil servants) write op-ed pieces for newspapers all the time. No money ever passes hand.

But Willie's scribing for the Sindo is a horse of a different colour. He writes a column so regularly for them that for a while we had high hopes that Aengus Fanning would recruit him as one the famous 03 team.

Anyway, his people told me last night that Willie gets no payment for his weekly column (I hadn't realised it was so regular). Which is fine. But if he's writing a weekly column, he shouldn't be doing it for free. That's not a good precedent for our profession.

If he wants, he can donate the fee to charity. And it's arguable that the column (a regular free platform for Willie's world view) could and should be declared to SIPO.