Miriam Lord: Shane Ross rediscovers value of AG’s advice

Safely back on the southside, Our man in the Maracana looked worn out after his Brazilian ordeal.

Shane Ross, aka Winston Churchtown, flew to Rio for sport.

But he didn’t get much of it. Instead, he had a terrible time.

With the best of intentions, Lord Ross went south with the swallows to boost the flagging morale of Ireland’s Olympians. He felt that there, in the stadiums and on the waterfront, his mere presence would be enough to rally our national champions to new heights.

There had been duff decisions in the boxing. And one of the fighters was sent home having tested positive for a banned substance. Then a Dublin man was arrested in the city for alleged ticket touting and some of those tickets came from the Olympic Council of Ireland’s (OCI) allocation.

Into this rapidly escalating shambles breezed our recently appointed Minister for Sport, announcing he would not only “cheer up” the deflated athletes but also get answers on the ticket embarrassment from Pat Hickey, the deeply political and well-connected boss of the OCI.

Announcing his mission with much fanfare, he made noises about bringing the veteran administrator to heel – something his more experienced ministerial predecessors had failed to do.

Thanks to his new job in Cabinet, Winston Churchtown may be a big noise on the sporting front in Ireland, but in veteran administrator Hickey he was taking on a powerful member of the international blazer elite.

When a Minister deigned to meddle in the internal affairs of his part-publicly funded OCI, tricky Hickey told him to take a hike. The Minister was left bitterly complaining about his treatment and publicly nursed his upset and hurt feelings.

“Shattered,” he wailed, in his rumpled linen jacket and sadly pristine training shoes.

Blazer elite

Pat Hickey said he thought things went very well.

Of course, as a seasoned member of the international blazer elite, Pat was taking legal advice. A course of action not hugely favoured by Lord Ross, who caused consternation within Cabinet when deciding not to heed the Attorney General’s advice to the Government before the recent abortion vote in the Dáil.

After all, he grandly declared, it was only advice.

But yesterday, not 24 hours after he fled South America for the more temperate climes of the Department of Sport in Leeson Lane, it became abundantly clear Winston Churchtown was very grateful for the Attorney General’s advice on how to proceed. They met before a late afternoon press conference in the department when he announced the setting up of a non-statutory inquiry into the Hickey ticket affair.

Events, as we know, took a sensational turn when the OCI president was arrested by Brazilian police early on Wednesday. Pat Hickey then took a turn. He went to hospital for observation but is now banged up on remand in Rio’s Bangu jail, an establishment that cannot usually be mentioned without the prefix “notorious.”

That’ll teach him to tangle with Lord Ross, who turned on his heels and dashed back to Ireland with the same haste he showed when racing over to Rio.

But the Minister was still his ebullient self when assailed by the media at Dublin Airport, although that was probably a combination of jetlag and the confidence-boosting properties of his bright blue trainers.

Not so much yesterday.

With Minister of State Patrick O’Donovan by his side, Ross read a very brief “joint statement” about the meeting “we” held with the Attorney General and what “we” agreed to do and how “we” believe that a non-statutory inquiry chaired by a retired judge is the best way to go and how “we” intend to set the ball rolling next week.

The youthful O’Donovan sounded like the senior man in this enterprise, handling questions deftly and occasionally poking the Independent TD and his ministerial boss in the arm when he wished to make a point.

“This is a decision that has been taken jointly by the two of us,” stressed the Limerick TD, who added that he was also speaking “as a member of the Fine Gael party”.

Meanwhile, Ross looked tired and deflated.

“I should say that Minister of State O’Donovan has had as large an input into this as me, maybe larger,” he gushed.

“There is absolute unanimity between Minister Ross and myself as to how we move forward,” added the junior minister, just in case anybody might be wondering otherwise.

Poor Winston Churchtown, hunched gingerly over the table with his hands clasped together, looked like an electric shock device had been placed in his chair and he was terrified he might get a jolt at any minute.

‘Tricky meeting’

“I’ve had messages of support from several Cabinet Ministers and consulted them before I went out, deliberately before it, because I knew it was going to be a tricky meeting and the Taoiseach has been 100 per cent supportive,” he wanly insisted. “There’s been no, ah, absolutely no hostility to me from them.”

What the hell has been going on?

Pat Hickey refused to meet young O’Donovan when he travelled earlier to Rio, but he didn’t seem half as put out. “That’s an issue you would have to take up with himself.”

But Winston was not happy, although he attempted a weak joke when reminded about Hickey’s lawyer advising that “Shane Ross needs to be put back in his box”. Was he annoyed about that? The Minister laughed it off.

“’T’would have to be a big box,” remarked the droll O’Donovan.

So another inquiry is in prospect. It’ll be a short one, although witnesses won’t be compelled to attend. And it won’t help if the two principal witnesses are still in jail in Brazil.

The way things are going, the retirement age for judges will have to be lowered considerably to keep the Government in chairpersons for the never ending stream of inquiries.

Last night, in venerable hostelries in places like west Cork and Connemara – where the bar staff shout “all rise!” at last orders – grizzled senior counsels and former judges on their holidays were switching off their mobile phones until another of their comrades is picked off by the Government.

And Shane Ross thought sport would be easy . . .