Just like Haughey Cowen sacrificed a close friend to hold on to power

BRIAN COWEN is facing an enormous test of his political pragmatism. Tribal to his core, the sacrifice of Willie O’Dea, one of his Fianna Fáil family, to satisfy the demands of his Green coalition partners must have been like a hammer blow to Cowen.

Fiercely loyal to friends, the realisation that one of his closest colleagues, who he enjoyed socialising with, had to leave to keep the government intact is another twist of the knife. An added dimension is that Cowen rates O’Dea very highly: despite his occasional buffoonery O’Dea is regarded as an able operator within cabinet and was likely to be promoted in near future.

Charles Haughey had to do worse to save his government 20 years ago.

The Progressive Democrats demanded that Brian Lenihan senior be sacked. The circumstances were bizarre: disorientated by medication following a liver transplant Lenihan claimed to have made a phone call to the President on the night the Dáil was being dissolved in 1982, suggesting that Fianna Fáil would form another government rather than have an election. The comment, made to a student during an interview, was leaked during the 1990 presidential campaign and Lenihan was called a liar because he had said previously that he had not made such a call (as if it was important anyway). In fact he hadn’t made the call – his much mocked “mature recollection” appeal via television was the truth – but the PDs, under Des O’Malley and aided by Mary Harney, decided Lenihan must go. Haughey sacked one of his closest friends in politics to save his own skin.

Cowen, then a young back-bench TD, was regarded as one of the harshest critics of that move. Some years later, as a minister promoted by Albert Reynolds, he memorably told a Fianna Fáil ard-fheis this about Fianna Fail’s coalition partners: “If in doubt, leave them out.” He was cheered to the rafters and he was recognised as a coming force in the party.

However, much has happened since then and Cowen has had plenty of experience of coalition. He knows that the views of minority partners must be respected, especially when there has been much comment in recent days to suggest that Fianna Fáil is riding roughshod over its experienced junior partner, most pertinently from former Senator Deirdre de Burca.

The pragmatist in Cowen can see that the Greens had to make a stand on O’Dea – as much as for their own survival as the issues involved – and that he has to keep the Greens onside. His government will fall without the Greens, Fianna Fáil would be ejected from power and he would lose his leadership of the party. But it doesn’t mean it won’t be a massive test of his political maturity. How will he conduct himself with the Greens, especially as they have sought kudos for seeking O’Dea’s head?

There is further damage to the public perception of Cowen. His strongly expressed support for O’Dea is now shown to have been totally misplaced. While Lenihan was the victim of circumstances 20 years ago O’Dea has behaved very badly and Cowen was too quick to offer support.

The entire sequence of events involving O’Dea and his subsequently withdrawn defamatory comments about Sinn Fein’s Maurice Quinlivan – and his deliberately partial and spun explanation in recent weeks – is a disgrace. O’Dea defamed a political rival, something that he has admitted, apologised for and paid damages for but for which he is not getting near enough criticism in itself.

It is one thing criticising some rival’s performance or behaviour but deliberately throwing out a smear to damage that person’s reputation is dreadful behaviour for a minister or any other politician.

Some of O’Dea’s defenders have sought to excuse him because he targeted Sinn Féin. That is hardly good enough, no matter what most people think of that party’s past. O’Dea may argue that he only asked a newspaper to find out about things he had heard and that this did not constitute an allegation but the way in which he said it – and most of us have heard the tape by now – implied that he believed it to be true. This is why he had to pay undisclosed, but apparently sizeable, damages to Quinlivan.

But what happened after Quinlivan sued makes matters worse. O’Dea swore an affidavit insisting that he had never made the remark. This was wrong, he had. Quinlivan was unable to get redress, via an injunction, that he sought before the local elections.

Subsequently, once the tape became available, O’Dea said he had forgotten that he’d said these things, but does he really expect us to believe that, when it came to swearing an affidavit, denying that he’d said it he would have forgotten asking a newspaper to check out whether a political opponent was running a brothel?

He also expects us to believe that he would have corrected that “mistake” even if he hadn't been told of the existence of the tape recording of the interview. He said that of course he remembered that he'd been taped when he swore the affidavit. And yet he couldn't remember what he said? That’s extraordinary, to say the least.

O’Dea is spinning that it was a private matter between him and Quinlivan and that the settlement finalised the matter amicably. However, anyone familiar with the legal process knows settlements are made often to avoid the costs of going into court. The settlements involve give and take on both sides. Whatever was agreed between the pair does not change the facts of how O’Dea behaved. And crucially, O’Dea in his affidavit made many references to his standing as a TD and minister. This was a political attack as much as a personal one. O’Dea’s way of dealing with the issue has been a disgrace too.

FINE GAEL senator Eugene Regan, who irritates Fianna Fáil enormously, especially since he spoke regularly (and accurately) on Bertie Ahern’s dreadful evidence to the Planning Tribunal, had raised O’Dea’s behaviour twice in the Seanad before this week. O’Dea responded in the Sunday Independent by launching an attack on Regan's relationship with one of his brothers, who has a conviction for a matter entirely unrelated to politics. It is hard to take O’Dea’s claim – made yesterday to Sean O’Rourke – that he is “a victim” seriously when he stoops to that level.

Yet ironically it was that RTÉ interview, as much as anything that ruined him. His tone – particularly that “I am a victim here too” line – was wrong, even when he was saying that he had apologised. He could not explain how, as a minister, he could excuse giving Garda information to a journalist for political purposes.

There is little doubt but that O’Dea must be stunned at how all of this has panned out, especially as he must have expected he would get the backing of his friend Cowen, who had made much of his friend's “honest mistake” and who was willing to cling to the Dáil motion of confidence from Wednesday evening until John Gormley visited him yesterday at teatime.

But Cowen has to take responsibility for what O’Dea did and is damaged by his publicly displayed attitude to it. What O’Dea did was political, not personal. That sort of behaviour should be of deep concern to a party leader interested in ethical standards. Instead, Cowen selectively cited the rule book, saying O’Dea had not breached the ministerial code of conduct. I doubt whoever drew up the guidelines envisaged behaviour like O’Dea’s. In any case Cowen should not have to clutch to written codes to distinguish between right and wrong, neither should O'Dea.

One can only imagine the shock within Fianna Fáil. Only last week they were crowing about George Lee. O’Dea delivered the cruellest line about Fine Gael treating its trophy capture like a bidet. That was Willie, always clever, always with the quip, always with the little line. However, O’Dea has turned out to be too clever by half and he has talked himself out of a job. He has no one but himself to blame.