Pushed aside - but McCreevy is being rewarded for election stunt

WAS Charlie McCreevy rewarded or shafted? It would seem that he was both. He was offered the velvet shaft and invited to jump for the reward of a plum job in Europe.

Whether the appointment should be considered an honour may be another question, especially when one considers that he is being banished to the position once held by Pádraig Flynn, who descended to a new political low this week in blaming his wife for the bogus offshore account in which the £50,000 that he bummed off Tom Gilmartin was deposited. Flynn has become a class act who deserves a prominent place in Fianna Fáil's growing scoundrel index.

McCreevy was first elected to the Dáil in the 1977 Fianna Fáil landslide. He quickly became disillusioned with Minister for Finance George Colley, the uncrowned dunderhead of Irish politics.