Government’s dogged bid to clear up mess from the pup it sold us

THIS was quite some weekend for the Government.

They were in rag order all week, what with opinion polls scattering dioxins all over them and the broken promises theme running like a ghastly Barry Manilow song you hear in the morning and just can't get out of your mind for the whole day.

Admittedly, they had a cunning fight-back plan. This plan set out to convince the nation that Fianna Fáil had not misled anybody coming up to the election. The plan was supported by documentation, including chunks from the pre-election manifesto.

As a response to public and media mistrust, it was earnest, orthodox and daft as a brush. Opinion polls and a million vox pop interviews have established that both public and media feel they not only got sold a pup in the last election, but that the pup had worms and a touch of distemper into the bargain. Neither the public nor media feels good about buying this mangy pup. Particularly not media, which went off the pup so quickly it may be the quickest onset of buyer's regret in history.

It has taken the Government some time to fully come to terms with the linked realities that a) the purchased pup is a stinker, b) it's never going to be anything but a stinker, and c) after a year, dogs being dogs, it's at least twice the size of the stinker it was at the beginning.

However, having eventually come to terms with it, the Government last week got decisive and launched their fight-back campaign. It didn't seem to strike any of them that the campaign in effect says: "We told you the truth at the time, but you were too dumb to pick up on it, so you voted us in and reaped the whirlwind and then got silly enough to believe we'd told lies to you, and now we have to tell you how doubly thick you are."

There was a real 'don't make me come down there' tone to the campaign, which seemed to be based on absolute ignorance of the process by which people form convictions and a matching ignorance of the process by which they relinquish them.

People, once they have adopted an explanation for the circumstances in which they find themselves, let go of that explanation only if offered a markedly more attractive or logical one. Those citizens who believe they were lied to are not going to convert from that belief by being asked to read bits of a manifesto one year past its shelf life. Especially when most citizens would choke rather than read a manifesto even when it's in its first ripe bloom coming up to an election.

It's always a disappointment when a PR plan with lots of data and available spokespeople fails to grasp its audience warmly by the throat, but that's the way it was going. The audience, having decided it had been sold a pup, was damned if it was going to let go of it. Victims Refuse to Relinquish Stinker Pup could have been the headline. No doubt the word went round to all ministers to get out there and surgically remove said pup by hammering home every euro spent on anything since the election and comparing it with every promise made before the election.

Somewhere along the line, the message failed to get through and so two ministers, this weekend, did something quite different. On Saturday, Micheál Martin walked into the televisual lion's den and on Sunday, Noel Dempsey invited media into the Government Buildings to watch him unpaint himself from the corner into which he had enthusiastically painted himself on third level fees.

A conspiracy theorist friend of mine was maddened by both performances. Early in the week, the conspiracy theorist had confidently advanced the notion that Dempsey's third level fees controversy had been staged to take the heat of SARS and waiting lists off Micheál Martin. Like all conspiracy theories, it has a great superficial appeal, but my own view is that, whereas Dempsey, at any time, could set fire to himself out of principle or out of spite, depending on his level of combativeness on the particular day, I don't see him going beyond mild self-scorching in the interests of his colleague, the Minister for Health. Indeed, the much-claimed internal loyalty of Fianna Fáil does not frequently induce one Cabinet minister to turn himself into a crispy critter for another.

But let's keep it in sequence. Starting with the Late, Late Show outing. It might be suggested that for Minister Martin to go on this show at a time when his department is up to its armpits in chronic controversy and has the Brennan, Prospectus and Hanly reports all circling to crash-land, was reckless and pointless. It was also infinitely productive. Of course the audience had its share of individuals recently drubbed by the system mandated to care for them. Of course the audience voted against increasing taxes to allow for major improvements in health. Of course the audience, at the end of that programme segment, indicated that they didn't think Martin had a snowball's chance in hell of achieving what needed to be achieved.

But they gave him a rousing round of applause, all the same, when Pat Kenny wished him luck in what he's trying to do. Some of that applause undoubtedly acknowledged his courage in being there at all, but I suspect the major part of it was simple gratitude that he didn't bilge on about the billions going into this service and the millions allocated to that service and the capital spend on the other service.

So far, for Fianna Fáil, so unexpectedly good.

Dempsey then annoyed everybody by calling a press conference yesterday morning at an hour that suited nobody, to announce not only that he wasn't going to bite the bullet, walk the plank, relinquish his portfolio and retreat to the backbenches to lick his wounds and form a cabal against the Taoiseach, but that he had a deal worth roughly three times what he would have got out of re-imposing third level fees.

Not even a good conspiracy theorist could make sense of this conclusion to the conflict over third level fees. It was about as logical as killing a pig in order to make custard. At the beginning of last week, Michael McDowell was doing a poc fada off the summit of Questions and Answers with the puck aimed squarely at Dempsey's noggin. Yet at the beginning of this week, Dempsey's heading back to his department in Marlboro Street, clutching a bag of goodies in the middle of which is €12 million voluntarily donated by Tánaiste Mary Harney.

When he was asked how damaged he felt by this defeat, Dempsey clearly didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He chose to laugh. Understandably. Here's a man egging to bring back third level fees that would bring in only €16 million who gets a pressie of €42 million all of it coming from outside his own budget. Him and Liberace. Crying all the way to the bank.