The curious case of Ivor the Rambler

IVOR Callely doesn’t really live in North Dublin or West Cork — he lives in a bubble inside his own head.

His wrist, but not his hand, rested on the Bible as he swore an oath of truth at the beginning of testimony to the Seanad’s standards committee — though who needs the ‘greatest story ever told’ when you have Ivor’s expenses explanation extravaganza ahead of you?

For had Ivor not been betrayed in his own garden of Gethsemane (well, Clontarf golf course), on that “black day” in May 2007 when the voters gave him the kiss-off? And why? Because he had been “hanged for a non-hanging offence” when sacked as junior minister two years earlier? And now this? Yes, he had been denied natural justice three times before the cock crowed.

And then the cock started crowing again: “I did a lot of good,” Callely announced without anyone actually asking him to.

Then, with jaw-dropping self-awareness he mused that he may have been “financially hurtful” to himself by not cashing expenses cheques sent to him earlier this year, but hey, that’s the kinda guy he is.

Considering he had already claimed €81,015 in travel allowances centred on his West Cork holiday home, taxpayers must surely have been grateful for this belated self-sacrifice.

But what was the exact status of that Kilcrohane pile? Callely insisted it was his home, his castle, his place of refuge away from the ungrateful hordes of Clontarf. Why, he even told Dublin City Council as much and paid them his second-home tax for the pad in the capital. But, strangely, he also told Dublin City Council that was where his registered vote was, and then there is the little matter that no forwarding system for mail to his Bantry Bay abode was ever set-up. Confusing.

He tripped-up over the vote rope by at first insisting that politicians would only change their vote address if an election was coming.

When it was pointed out there had been the little matters of last year’s local and European elections and the two Lisbon polls since he fled south, he went unusually quiet. When asked if it was correct to say he spent the working week in Dublin and the rest of the time in Cork, Callely replied that was “nearly an accurate reflection”. So does that mean it’s true or not? Like so much else about the man, you had to make up your own mind.

So, was he keeping the Clontarf address for political reasons, for his glorious Dáil comeback? He pondered the point before being overcome by delusions of grandeur as he recalled how broken Richard Nixon had appeared after his TV debate with JFK and “look where he ended up a few years later”.

Well, yeah Ivor, he ended up president of the USA — and was lucky not to end up in jail a few years after that for Watergate, but do you really think comparing yourself to Trickie Dickie is the wisest thing to do at the moment? Really?

Cork Senator Denis O’Donovan tried to get to the bottom of exactly where Callely lived and when. “What about the three or four months we have off in the summer?” he asked, before realising what an unflattering image of the upper house the term “have off” painted and hastily changed it to: “I mean the non-sitting days.”

Callely pointed out how he had kept “bumping into” O’Donovan in Cork in the three weeks leading up to the hearing — in the street, in the butcher’s, outside his office. It began to look as if O’Donovan might have grounds for a restraining order.

Callely repeatedly kept alluding, vaguely, to problems in his “evolving personal life” as reasons for his elephantine expenses bill, but he did not want to air such things in the glare of the media spotlight — yet when offered the chance to explain the relevance of all this to the committee in private session, he declined the opportunity. Strange.

“In hindsight, perhaps this was a matter I should have handled differently,” Callely announced in a well-rehearsed attempt at humility, but it did not look like the six senators sitting opposite a lonely-looking, solitary Ivor, were buying it, especially as it emerged the senator had claimed “overnight” expenses for sleeping in his own bed.

Maybe Callely loves West Cork so much because he is such a keen rambler, and he was certainly keen to ramble on and on in front of the committee as his testimony at times touched on the embarrassing.

Callely repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, but conceded he had “annoyed many people” throughout the country who thought he’d been “deceitful”. Well, you can say that again Ivor.