Question everything – let’s not have an Irish Enron

IT’S been quite a while, but GUBU is making a comeback. An acronym for grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented, the phrase was paraphrased from a comment by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey while describing a strange series of incidents in 1982 that led to a double murderer being apprehended in the house of the attorney general. It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance.

The corresponding acronym was coined by Conor Cruise O’Brien and both it and the phrase are still occasionally used in Irish political discourse to describe notorious scandals.

Now we hear the grotesque news about ceann comhairle John O’Donoghue’s expenses when he was a minister. He spent more than €32,000 frolicking around on the government jet to social events in less than a week while at the same time 32 thalidomide victims lose their Christmas bonus, saving to the exchequer €9,000.