O’Donoghue was running out of track ... and fast

AS a lover of the race track, John O’Donoghue would have been all too painfully aware the odds on him keeping his job were lengthening with dramatic speed.

Indeed, equine events have dominated this sorry saga of opulent excess and belated regret – the €1,400 a day charged to the taxpayer for keeping a limo driver at the then minister’s beck and call at the Cheltenham festival, the irony of a public apology finally being dragged out of him as he mingled with punters and bookies at Listowel, and the coup de grace being delivered by the revelation that crucial fact-finding missions to Paris and Australia just happened to coincide with the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and the Melbourne Cup.

When the tidal wave of anger which would eventually sweep him from office first began to surge in July, Mr O’Donoghue sought shelter by hiding behind his constitutional position as he refused to either explain or defend the sheer lavishness of the foreign adventures he had enjoyed, often with his wife accompanying him, while Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism

When the Irish Examiner tracked down the elusive ex-Minister for Fun he refused nine times to shed light on why he believed the taxpayer should so generously indulge his love of €1,000 per night Venetian hotel suites usually only sighted by Hollywood stars, or pick up the bill for his other outrageous displays of publicly-funded ostentation. Mr O’Donoghue insisted it was a matter for his ex-department as they had made the arrangements – as if civil servants had forced him to endure such luxury, and he lacked the basic wit to realise the cost to the country’s coffers of such sumptuous surroundings.

When it was finally revealed the €500,000 expense bill racked up at the Ministry of Fun had snowballed into another €200,000 at the usually desk-bound office of Ceann Comhairle, the excuse changed to it all being “within the guidelines”.

Sadly, this has now become the catch-all explanation for this Government: “It wasn’t my fault – the guidelines made me do it.” After initially trying to pretend the controversy did not exist, Mr O’Donoghue eventually issued a snivelling and self-serving non-apology apology – tellingly, not to the little people who picked-up the bills, but the TDs on whose largesse he depended.

This was followed by his only real display of regret as he was cornered at Listowel and the depth of the mire he was in could no longer be ignored. The final blow was delivered last Friday when his expenses as Ceann Comhairle were released after a lengthy delay – coincidentally, just as the news agenda was being dominated by the Lisbon poll.

The two trips to Paris which both just happened to occur at the same time as the Longchamp race meetings merely underlined the list of indulgences which had emerged previously, such as the time he effectively hi-jacked the €8,000 per hour Government jet for a six-day period as he was whisked to the Cannes film festival, then to an engagement in his Kerry constituency, back to Cannes, before toddling off to London.

“I had not intended to draw any attention to the 10% pay cut I took in October 2008,” he bleated as he intentional drew attention to it in a pathetic bid to pose as the champion of personal sacrifice for the national good.

But it was much too little, much too late. No one can get their heads around €440 billion being thrown at the bank guarantee scheme or €54bn pumped into Nama, but €120 for “hat hire” and €472 to get the Minister chauffeur driven between terminals at Heathrow – that’s real money, those are the figures that will lodge in people’s minds and fester into intense anger as they stare down the barrel of the worst economic slump in any western nation since the 1930s.

The fact he was the man supposedly in charge of derailing the Oireachtas gravy train only added to the unreality of the situation and made his position laughable. Mr O’Donoghue travelled the world like royalty and losing a no-confidence vote, triggered by Labour, would have been the Dáil equivalent of regicide – the disposal of a king. Hence, he announced last night he would go before the axe fell.

If the Ceann Comhairle’s fall from office gives our captains of state at least some pause for thought, at least we will have got something back in return for the €700,000 lavished on Mr O’Donoghue.