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