RADIO REVIEW:HE TOOK the hot seat on Marian Finucane(RTÉ Radio One, weekends) like the surprise winner of X-Factor. We watched and cringed as he croaked and danced around with two left feet – actually, make that three left feet – but suddenly he was singing . . . like a bird. From the audacity of hopelessness in the Dáil to something we could now tentatively call hope? Last Saturday, it seemed he was finally on the up.
So what if Brian Cowen’s speech last week at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce dinner was more rousing than reassuring? We needed to hear some humanity. Now that all of his cards were on the table, this could be a new beginning. We could do what he wanted and pull together. All the bad news was out there now, right? It’s not like he was hiding any more nasty surprises up his sleeve at, say, Anglo Irish Bank.
“Tough old time?” Finucane began. Cowen said, “I think most people are bemused, concerned, anxious obviously as a result of how quickly the turn has come in our fortunes.” Or, put another way, we are Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, which could be the title of his next ballad in Offaly. And, given his dogged lack of ownership over his own party’s mistakes, a bar of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien while he’s at it.
But Irish politicians don’t do humility. Laps of honour, however, they are very good at. Cowen said “two-thirds” of Ireland’s loss in competitiveness is related to the euro-sterling exchange rate. Recently, maybe. But the Central Bank has been warning about our worsening competitiveness for years. And does his mantra to pull together include crossing political lines or does it only apply to those outside Leinster House?
Finucane marvelled at his media comeback last weekend. But it was no miracle. Public opinion is like a small, petulant child. It kicks its feet, screams and wails but, given the right moment, it is surprisingly easy to stick a soother in its gob or lull it to sleep with a lullaby to business leaders, making the baby momentarily forget why it was crying in the first place. Until something else happens to set it off again . . .
By the time Irish Life & Permanent fessed up to billions in loans to Anglo Irish bank, the Happiness Index was all over the gaff on The Right Hook(Newstalk 106-108) and Labour's Joan Burton had become our very own concrete canary. She will go on singing inside the Dáil – and out: "It's the impact of this drip, drip, drip of events," she said. "This is what is doing the most damage to the country's reputation."
Given that this latest “accounting” took the Department of Finance from October to the middle of January to finally figure out, Burton wondered if that Department, the financial regulator “and maybe even the Central Bank” were all straining to protect Anglo Irish. (Or, more likely, the sector?)
Still, never attribute malice or conspiracy theories to people or situations when thoughtlessness or incompetence will do.
As Burton left, Hook couldn't resist big-upping himself by ending his interview on a sour note. "Thank you for appearing live on The Right Hook," he said. "She is apparently appearing in recorded form somewhere else." That's Hookie all over. Never one to let a potential dig at the competition pass him by. Even though it was an unnecessary way to finish, the consistency of his hubris was strangely reassuring.
We needed respite. And we got it with Maeve O'Sullivan's The Butterfly Club(Newstalk 106-108, Sunday), a light fancy about an all-female Dublin singing group. They didn't all sound like angels, but that was the beauty of it. Their names alone oozed musicality: Lilo Duggan, Gertie Moloney, Gifford Whittle, and Minnie Kerins.
“It actually has improved confidence in yourself,” Kerins said. “You just get out and do your bit.” It’s easy to forget that we didn’t always have the false bravado that has tripped us up so spectacularly in recent years.
Stephanie Doyle sang Blue Moon, and afterwards soprano and founding member Niamh Murray mused, “It’s all this X-Factor. It’s all this pop mania . . . It might be old hat but it unifies us all and brings us together. There’s a lot to be said for what’s in the past. Not everything in the past is bad.”
On Thursday's Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio One, weekdays), it was back to our future. Lenihan defended the fact that he hadn't read the passage of the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report on the irregular Anglo deposits. "I don't believe my officials should be scapegoated in this regard," he said, and, even if he had read it, he wasn't convinced "if the significance would have leapt out at me at that stage". Unusually honest, but a little scary too.
“Any regrets?” Cathal Mac Coille asked. “It’s not a matter of regrets,” Lenihan replied. But the minister wasn’t playing down the dire consequences of this latest scandal. “This is the real damage done in this matter,” he said, “the reputational damage.” Well, we now know that at least Irish Life Permanent and Anglo Irish Bank were pulling together, though probably not in a way that anyone would have ever intended.
qfottrell@irishtimes.com