Ministers of substance marked by ability to break through bureaucracy

WE now have a three-tier ministerial system. At the bottom are the soon-to -be-announced ministers of state. At the top are finance, health, education, justice and transport. In the middle are the others, widely interpreted, since Brian Cowen announced his cabinet, as of minor importance, offering damn-all potential advancement to their holders, and awarded either as punishments or consolation prizes.

Hence the view that Micheál Martin, since peace has broken out in the north, will do a lot of foreign travel, achieve the sum total of zilch and become largely invisible. This view, articulated in the week that up to 100,000 people died in a cyclone in Burma and a million more were robbed of their homes, clothes, food, property and sanitation, would suggest that Ireland’s much-vaunted neutrality extends to standing idly by while a dictatorship effectively wages war on its own people.

Goal’s John O’Shea wants the international community to “go in” to what its rulers call Myanmar, to ensure the military junta can’t: a) steal aid intended for the dispossessed and b) prevent it getting to those who desperately need it.