Why Ivor the Survivor became Ivor the Diver

THE two nicknames Ivor Callely has collected during his political career - Ivor the Engine and Ivor the Conniver - pay testament to his strongest attributes - his enormous capacity for graft and his shameless self-promotion.

Once the news broke yesterday that a major Dublin construction company, John Paul, arranged for Callely’s Landsdale House in Clontarf to be painted for free in the early 1990s, you knew that before the day was gone, he would be walking the plank. And what kind of plunge was Ivor the Diver taking? The inglorious one into the backwaters of the Government back benches.

The more you find out about Callely’s “form” since he became a junior minister in 2002, the more you conclude he was lucky to have lasted so long.