As Mary Harney enjoyed the last days of her summer holiday in fashionable Provence last weekend, she was blissfully unaware of the nasty political storm about to erupt at home. It had been a relaxing two-week break in the south of France for the busy senior politician who had endured a particularly hectic year as second in command in government and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
Harney travelled to Provence with the same group of friends she has holidayed with for the last 12 years or so; friends with whom she could totally relax and switch off and temporarily shed the heavy load of political office. They included Renagh Holohan, an Irish Times journalist who organised the holiday, Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy and his new wife Noeleen, and Bernie Malone, the Labour politician who recently lost her seat in the European elections, and her husband.
Harney and Holohan flew to Nice on scheduled flights, and travelled to a villa in the hills above Nice overlooking the Cote d'Azur. It was owned by a company controlled by their friend, millionaire businessman Ulick McEvaddy. They were joined in that first week by the McCreevys and the Malones.
The villa was offered to them for their holiday by McEvaddy's wife Mary, when she met Holohan at a social function in Dublin earlier this year. The offer was discussed and travel arrangements were made after it was decided to take up the hospitality.
At the end of the first week, the party vacated the villa and Harney and Holohan moved into a hotel. Last week they met the McEvaddys who arrived to holiday in the villa with their children. Harney and Holohan brought the McEvaddys out to dinner twice and paid as a token of their appreciation.
The weather was glorious, the company and food were good, and no one in the party had a care in the world - but the holiday peace was soon to be shattered.
Last Saturday morning, two days before the Tanaiste was due to fly back to Dublin, a morning newspaper made a brief mention in a social column that Harney and McCreevy, spent part of their holiday in a villa at the invitation of McEvaddy. The few lines were sufficient to open the ethics floodgates.
The paragraph did not go unnoticed. The previous week, the Sunday Tribune asked McEvaddy whether he had loaned his villa to Harney and McCreevy.
Not only did he deny owning a villa in the south of France but McEvaddy said he was not acquainted with Harney on the level to offer her such hospitality. Strange, given that the Tanaiste was guest of honour at a charity dinner held in the McEvaddys' house earlier this year. But the Tribune decided there was no story.
With the story eventually out in the open, the Tribune decided to carry it on page one. It pointed out that McEvaddy, the owner of the aircraft company Omega Air, had lobbied Government support in blocking a new EU directive on aircraft noise levels.
No sooner had the newspaper hit the streets than opposition politicians, hungry for blood after a quiet summer period, prepared for attack. They were more than delighted to take the opportunity to criticise the politician they believed has spent too much time frequenting the high moral ground in the last two decades.
She was one of the Fianna Fail backbenchers whose unhappiness with Charles Haughey's leadership led to her leaving the fold and setting up the Progressive Democrats along with Des O'Malley in 1985. High standards in high places was the new party's mantra.
The attacking opposition pack, led by Labour Party leader Ruairi Quinn, accused Harney and McCreevy of seriously compromising themselves. Quinn said not only had McEvaddy lobbied the Government against an EU aircraft noise directive (a directive McEvaddy told the High Court three weeks ago would cost his business more than £26 million if implemented), he also pointed out that McEvaddy and his brother Des had lobbied to build a private air terminal at Dublin Airport.
It was noted that Harney had taken a keen interest in airport policy, recently enraging several Fianna Fail ministers, including Public Enterprise Minister Mary O'Rourke, when she suggested the sale of Shannon Airport by Aer Rianta and her backing of a proposal to build a second airport in Baldonnel in the heart of her constituency.
Conflict of interest was the charge of the day.
However, Fine Gael was strangely quiet on the affair initially. The reason soon became apparent. It emerged on Monday that John Bruton had been flown by helicopter - courtesy of McEvaddy - from Cork to Omagh for a memorial service last August. Bruton said the flight was a "political donation" to the party. It also emerged that Jim Mitchell and Nora Owen stayed in the villa last year.
Publicly, the Taoiseach was standing by his woman. On Monday morning, as the Tanaiste was packing her suitcases in France in preparation for her journey home, Bertie Ahern spoke to the press at a function in Drumcondra. He was very casual in his dismissal of the conflict of interest charges. He said he was not concerned and saw nothing wrong with his two most senior Ministers accepting Mr McEvaddy's hospitality.
"My colleagues well understand the rules and if there is anything that they have to put forward, they fill up their declarations like everybody else."
Asked if it would have been more prudent if the Ministers had simply organised their own holidays, the Taoiseach added: "Well, if you got an invitation for a few days in a very nice villa in a nice location I suppose we would probably all take it and only some of us would feel envious that we didn't get the invitations . . ."
Privately some Fianna Fail figures enjoyed seeing the Tanaiste squirm. They saw their leader on the run at the hands of Harney on more than one occasion, most recently during the Philip Sheedy affair. One backbencher said it was about time she received a dose of her own medicine - and it did not go unnoticed that McCreevy escaped the blazing controversy with hardly a bruise.
"There is a bit of the divil in Charlie," said one Fianna Failer. "You would be expected to forgive him, but not herself."
Part of the reason that McCreevy was let off the hook, so to speak, was he went to ground with his office telling journalists he was on holidays until Monday next. By contrast, Harney, tired and tense after the controversial end to her break, decided to confront the criticism and agreed to be interviewed on Morning Ireland on Tuesday. She came across as clearly angry at the fuss. She told Richard Crowley she had been a friend of the McEvaddys for a very long time, long before she became a minister.
"If a matter arises before the Government and it involves a friend and that has already happened in relation to this Government, a matter did come before the Government that involved a friend of mine. I made it clear to my Government colleagues at the time that this person was a friend of mine and that's what I would have done in any occasion where a friend of mine is involved."
Harney said this is a small country in which people mix. By virtue of being a minister was one expected to abandon family and friends, she asked.
She took the opportunity to hit back at Quinn. "Nobody suggested that when Ruairi Quinn was Minister for Finance that he should not be involved in any decisions relating to the banks because his brother was chairman of the biggest bank in the country."
However, she softened as the day went on. In an interview with TV3, she said she was sorry she stayed in the McEvaddy villa if it had caused upset to her friends. That had not been her intention.
Government Ministers are circulated with a handbook on their appointment outlining their obligations under the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995. The first paragraph says: "All office-holders are expected to adhere to the fundamental principle that an offer of gifts, hospitality or services should not be accepted where it would, or might appear, to place him or her under an obligation."
For those Ministers who may be unsure about whether their acceptance of a gift, hospitality etc, was not the right thing to do, section 1.17 of the guidelines, headed Cases of Doubt, reads: "In any case of doubt regarding conflict of interest, the Taoiseach should be consulted."
A spokesman for the Taoiseach said this week Mr Ahern was not consulted by either the Tanaiste or McCreevy on whether it was proper to accept McEvaddys' hospitality either before or after the event, but there was no reason, he claimed, as there was no "doubt" in this case.
There was certainly doubt in the minds of Opposition politicians who clearly felt uncomfortable with two senior Ministers spending part of their summer holiday at a villa in the south of France as the guest of someone who wants to persuade the Government to take a number of decisions which could work to his financial advantage.
Chief Whip Seamus Brennan said there were no plans to have a fresh look at the ethical guidelines for Ministers. "They are as watertight as they can be," he said. Reading them, that certainly appears to be the case.
Mary Harney is a fearless politician and a hard worker who has never in her career shied away from speaking her mind. She has always championed the notion of honesty and integrity in politics. As a government spokesman put it this week, she would not be bought, especially "for the price of a B and B in the south of France".
However, it was not Harney's integrity that was under scrutiny at the end of the day. It is her judgment, or rather her lack of it.
