The cabinet on tour - Enjoy your weekend, ministers

AT THIS stage it has become as predictable as the debate over who will be allowed to march in New York’s St Patrick’s Day parade.

The airwaves might bristle with all sorts of all sorts, some insisting that a cadre of Irish Citizens Defence Force trainee suicide bombers should be allowed march down Fifth Avenue, and, later go to the Solemn Pontifical Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral, just because one of them half remembers a half-granny called Bridie Eilee McMagooley.

Others will insist that they have nothing to do with the Green Flag and demand that they be banned.

Meanwhile, others will work themselves into a lather over government ministers taking to the skies to help celebrate our national day in the four corners of the world.

As a display of pettiness and small-minded misery this Pavlovian begrudgery has — thankfully — few equals and shows a complete lack of understanding of how the world works.

It also suggests that the miserable moaners don’t have much experience of the exhausting, frustrating and life-eating ordeal international air travel has become. Anyone who thinks that travelling to the far ends of the earth for a two- or three-day business trip is a jolly should try it. Once would do.

By the time Brian Cowen gets to Kuala Lumpur, Noel Dempsey to Sydney or Dermot Ahern gets to Buenos Aires they, and their entourage, will be well sick of travelling and drowning the shamrock at the local Irish club barbie will be the last thing on their minds.

As they unpack, in what hopefully is a splendid hotel suite, it is possible that some of them, especially the more experienced ones, will think of home and how much more pleasant it might be to spend the bank holiday weekend here with their wives or husbands and children. Just like the rest of us.

The reality is that St Patrick’s Day offers Ireland a marketing opportunity that money simply could not buy. If the Irish are in town on March 17 every door is open and we would be the worst sort of fools not to try to take advantage of every single opportunity it presents us with. There is hardly a country in the world that would not envy the access-all-areas welcome the celebrations afford anyone representing Ireland.

We can validly criticise the Government over the state of the health services, over drug barons using mobiles in prison cells to run their empires, over bad planning and delayed schools, over broadband and traffic chaos, over all sorts of things but we cannot criticise ministers for abandoning their families, packing their bags and heading off to the far corners of the world to try and promote that international brand we all depend on: Ireland.

Neither can we criticise them if they insist on a bit of comfort. What would we have them do? Travel steerage, bring their own sandwiches, maybe stay in a B&B?

No, the 15 senior cabinet members and God knows how many junior ministers who will be abroad this weekend deserve our support and hopefully a few of them will make connections that will create a few jobs or win a contract or two.

The only thing we need to worry about is the fact that Willie O’Dea might be running the country as he and Séamus Brennan are the only senior ministers at home this St Patrick’s Day. A small enough risk to take to promote Ireland’s interests.