No pain, no gain for the minister who mastered his environment

FOR quite a while before he became Environment Minister, Dick Roche was in contention for the Clever Political Pain in the Arse Perpetual Trophy.

He'd been some class of an international consultant before going into politics. He had a big brain on him. A well-read, neatly organised big brain. A big brain, every file folder of which he had immediate access to. He'd be able to tell you the last sentence you just read shouldn't have a preposition at the end of it. Not only would he be able to tell you stuff like that, he would make sure he told you stuff like that. No joke was ever cracked Dick Roche couldn't cap, no quotation ever quoted he couldn't give the source for, no policy ever mentioned he couldn't elaborate on, no conspiracy theory about which he didn't have the real story.

None of which made him Mr Congeniality. In the Dáil canteen, members of his own party would point him out as brilliant and well-informed and make sure not to sit at his table. Being brilliant and well informed is acceptable in a politician as long as the politician belts up about it. Brian Cowen is both, but can't be bothered to show off either. Bertie Ahern spends his life attentively listening to people on subjects he could write Encyclopaedia Britannica entries about. And while Micheal Martin admits to being well-informed, he gives a self-deprecating impression that he got there by accident.

Politicians like Roche who whack you with their brilliance like it was a two-by-four include Michael McDowell, who knows everything about everything and will Senior Counsel you to a pulp if you don't acknowledge it, and Pat Cox, who has never owned an unexpressed thought. While the unrestrained punitive political brainpower packed by these guys evokes respect, it also evokes the response best expressed by Garfield the cartoon cat: "Have a nice day. Someplace else."

As a backbencher, the brilliant, well-informed Dick Roche was used and grievously misused by those in power. They sent him out, as they sent out the late Brian Lenihan, to defend the status quo on radio and TV whenever the status quo got ropy. He was always willing, ever reliable. In media debates, he didn't so much defeat opponents as wear them out. He mustered every available shred of data with such relentless good humour, it was like being beaten to death with a duvet.

Every time a change in government happened (and, children, back in those days, it happened every other weekend) he would, with justification, hope for promotion. Like the nursery rhyme, he was marched right up to the top of the hill and repeatedly marched back down again.

When he was eventually given a kind of a Ministry related to Europe, Roche steeped himself in the brief, worked like a dog and appeared occasionally on media explaining the abstruse. Those in the know maintained that Minister of State for Something in Europe was the apotheosis of the man's career. That was as far as he was going. The thing to remember, they would explain, was that Roche wasn't on the inside track within the organisation. More to the point, he wasn't close to Bertie.

All of which underestimated the radical shift in leadership style between the Haughey decade and the Ahern decade. Charlie Haughey wanted to run every department and didn't particularly value competence. Loyalty, dependence, craic, being a good supplier of information and ultimately obedience, were the traits he sought in underlings, and he regarded all of his ministers as underlings.

Bertie Ahern does not want to run every department, does not see his ministers as underlings and values competence highly. The discussion about the lamentable appointment of Ray Burke to his first Cabinet has notably failed to register that Burke was a fine and functional Minister for Foreign Affairs in that Cabinet. The Taoiseach, in making appointments, takes geographic and other considerations into account. He postpones. He listens. He gets persuaded. But, all else being equal, he goes for competence, and so, in a Bertie Ahern-led Government, Dick Roche at last stopped being a bridesmaid and got to be a bride.

He didn't change, as a result. He didn't need to. Characteristics that are frankly irritating in a backbencher are apposite in a senior Minister. Roche's big brain, diligence, dispassionate analytical strengths, verbal fluency and management capacity are finally matched by one of the most complex government departments. He is demonstrably on top of every aspect of his job. In fact, he now represents a case study in political patience finally getting its reward and of ability finding expression which should encourage every talented and currently disappointed backbencher in every party.

IT'S a curious thing. Some people are just meant to be Ministers. This may be most evident post factum. Now and then, you see a man or woman who, shorn of the role, prestige, infrastructure and personnel Cabinet membership brings with it, is quite simply lost. It's the benign opposite in Roche's case. It's so obvious he was born to be a Minister that people who don't pay much attention to politics assume he has been one for years. He acts as if he has more experience under his belt than is the reality. His handling of the controversial PR contract inherited from Martin Cullen has been masterfully tactful and understated. His Dáil contributions are confident and competent. No matter which facet of a multi-faceted brief is the subject of a media interview, he can provide day, date and detail. You get the feeling that he knows what page of a report the Principal Officer in the third office on the left on the second floor in the Custom House is reading at any given time.

He also has an oddball instinct for digressions which scratch the public where it itches. Last week, he sounded off on phone answering technology and then went on to take a lash at acronyms. Self-indulgent? Irrelevant? Not really. Technology which frustrates the citizen in accessing information is the antithesis of public service.

Just as important is the imperative to put a halt to the gallop of the acronym, that bunch of capital letters chosen by far too many companies and organisations as smart corporate branding.

Some of those moving to acronyms do so with malice aforethought. When Kentucky Fried Chicken suddenly became KFC, it didn't take a Mensa brain to work out that the fuller name might remind consumers of the dietary downside of frying. Which wouldn't be a good thing, with obesity moving to the top of the international agenda. Mostly, though, acronyms are just a fashion.

If Dick Roche's rubbishing of the acronym caused new organisations with a mission-stated imperative of reaching and serving the public to think twice about using initials instead of a more descriptive title, that would be a considerable contribution to making life more manageable for many people.

And when he's done that, maybe he'd move on to the Three Letter Abbreviation. If he killed the TLA, which is so OTT, of course using TLC, he'd be our VBF, 24/7.