Minister McCreevy caught in the headlights with a dose of reality TV

By Fergus Finlay

Brendan O'Brien would go off to the Costa del Sleazy with a camera crew, and like the good reporter he was (he's just retired, by the way), he would wind up confronting the dodgy builder or insurance scammer after all other efforts to bring him to justice had failed.

Your man would have spent several days avoiding the RTE crew, but Brendan would always catch him. Usually coming out of a flash-looking restaurant and just about to get into a shiny car.

You'd see the look of panic on the crook's face as Brendan closed in on him, camera and opening gambit at the ready: "We've come to ask you some questions, Mr Chancer," Brendan would begin.

Mr Chancer, half-surprised, would usually come over all flustered, before thinking of something witty to say, like "F%&$ off."

"You wouldn't answer our phone calls, Mr Chancer, nor our letters," Brendan would go on. "So will you tell us now why all your customers feel so cheated by your behaviour?"

By this time Mr Chancer (usually a bit overweight and ungainly, often with a large cigar in his mouth) will have struggled into the shiny car.

The last sight we would see would be the car pulling away into the distance. Brendan would have run a few yards after it, still shouting questions, but usually he would have to settle for the two fingers waved by the rapidly-retreating Mr Chancer.

It was an occasionally controversial form of investigative journalism that, but always entertaining television.

Brendan O'Brien was very good at it, and he will be missed.But I have a sense that television doesn't seem to be going in much for that form of investigation any more.

Maybe it's because what they call reality tv, or those shows that concentrate on embarrassing video moments, have made the chasing of people who don't want to be caught on camera a bit old-fashioned.

But I bet you never thought the technique would be revived to track down a Government Minister and catch him in the act.

The act of neglect, that is. I don't know whose idea it was to send a Prime Time crew to Cheltenham to hunt down Charlie McCreevy, and confront him with some of the questions he should have been answering in the Dáil, but it was inspired.

He had the same guilty look, the same expression as some of the Costa del Sleazy types of yore. And he waved the two fingers about just like the old days not literally, but metaphorically.

Why would it be necessary to hunt down a Government Minister like that? you might well ask. And don't be too surprised if you hear during the week that RTE senior management has got a rocket over Prime Time's "lack of courtesy".

But nevertheless, if you heard Minister McCreevy being interviewed on the programme, I imagine you'll probably remember all his references to democracy.

"That's democracy," he kept saying. The logic appears to be that the people chose Fianna Fáil in the last election, and therefore they have a mandate to do whatever they want.

If they want to rip the heart out of the Freedom of Information Act, that's democracy. If they want to go to the races in stead of attending to the duties they were elected for, that's democracy. If they want to cut the health services to ribbons, that's democracy.

Except it isn't. Neither Charlie McCreevy nor anyone else ever sought a mandate for the things they're doing now. Do you remember the posters that said "Vote FF, and close a ward in every hospital".

"Vote FF, and let's get back to secret Government". "Vote FF, so we can shut down the Dáil and go racing instead." "Vote FF. We'll bring Irish neutrality to a peaceful end."

Of course you don't, because there never were such posters. Instead we now have a Government that has essentially ditched whatever mandate they were given, and have embarked on an ideologically driven set of measures that are designed to turn Ireland into a highly centralised, bureaucratic and entirely callous state.

Twenty years I've been involved in politics, one way or another, and I've never seen anything like this. The Government of the day has contrived to make itself entirely unaccountable, while it pursues policies and choices it wasn't elected for.

The Taoiseach appears in the Dáil around once a fortnight, Ministers introduce legislation and then ram it through without even being there. Or if they are there, as in the case of McCreevy at the end of the Finance Bill a couple of weeks ago, they behave as if anyone who questions the legislation has a downright cheek.

When was the last time you saw the Taoiseach of Ireland appear on RTE for a current affairs interview? He'll do guest appearances on radio and television, provided he can talk about anything but politics.

How many times have you seen the Taoiseach of Ireland conduct a press conference, so that the national media can fire questions at him?

Even President Bush, whose advisers are said to be unable to sleep at night worrying about where he will put his foot in it next, has held a couple of press conferences recently.

It's not as if our Taoiseach has nothing to talk about. Ireland is about to be involved in a war. We have given secret understandings to the United States that they can send as many B52s through Irish air space as they want to.

They can land as many soldiers in Shannon as they want to. And this neutral country won't object in the slightest. We will support and engage in the war effort to the extent that the US requires us to. But we will tell the people and the parliament that it compromises nothing.

At the same time, our Government will ram through changes in the Freedom of Information Act to make sure that the decision-making processes they have indulged in will probably never see the light of day in any meaningful way.

The reason for the changes will never be explained to the democratically elected parliament of the people.

Day after day the crisis grows in our health service. No matter how dismissively Charlie McCreevy addresses the issue, it is under-funded.

Perhaps as many as 350 hospital beds will be closed in Dublin alone in the next couple of months. People who need treatment urgently will wait and wait until they become emergencies.

And all of that is democracy? I don't think so. I think Mr Chancer is back. Only now he's running the Government.

It's at a time like this we need good people. We lost one last week, perhaps one of the best. He never wrote for this paper, though he read it every day.

He wrote instead, for more than 30 years, for the Irish Times. His name was Dick Walsh, and he wrote about issues of social justice, accountability and democracy with a passion and a clarity without peer. He was matchless. Ireland will miss him.