Ministers make music with bailout boys but lull us all into a coma

As the troika decided to give Vincent Browne a miss this time, we made do with a dull duet from Noonan and Howlin

RELAXING IN the post-troikal afterglow, Michael and Brendan had all the time in the world to brief the media on the outcome of the latest review of Ireland’s bailout programme.

The troika representatives had already left town, thus avoiding the danger of a second Vincendiary device exploding in their faces. The last time they were here, broadcaster Vincent Browne gave them an unmerciful roasting when they held a press conference after their quarterly inspection.

It wasn’t going to happen yesterday: the bailout boys outlined their side of the story to economic correspondents in a lunchtime phone conference.

All very dull.

The Taoiseach was wise to remove himself from the soporific confines of Government Buildings for the morning. Ministers Noonan and Howlin had us belting for the doors after an hour of low-key number crunching and economic forecasting.

They ladled out their good news from the ECB, the IMF and the EU until the room was swimming in a brain-drenching alphabet soup of PCARS and MOUs, by way of GDP, ESM, CPA, PTSB and NAMA.

It was enough to send a Taoiseach to sleep.

So it was just as well that Enda was up the road in Dún Laoghaire with his VBF, Eamon Gilmore. The two men were making a good news announcement of 100 new jobs at Amgen Ireland.

Enda is truly a lucky general. For while he may have been caught dozing off in Dún Laoghaire, he would have fallen into a coma had he been at the gig back in Government Buildings.

We hear that some of his staff were miffed by the attention afforded to the fact that their boss fell asleep during the speeches, but it came as a relief to regular Enda watchers to discover that the Taoiseach is human after all.

Day after day, he’s up with the lark and tearing around like the Duracell bunny until the small hours. Something’s gotta give, and at least he didn’t snore in front of his American hosts.

To be fair to the drowsy Enda, his brief bout of head lolling didn’t last very long. This was an austerity cat-nap; the Taoiseach complying with the troika’s directive that forty winks must be downgraded to 25 until Ireland is back in the international markets.

A gold star for him, so, to add to the gold stars from our economic overlords that Noonan and Howlin were showing off back at base. Having recharged his batteries, Enda went off to west Dublin to see his party’s referendum posters rolling off the presses, before taking off for Punchestown where he was last seen schlepping across the mud like a two year old.

Of course, when challenged, he denied slipping away to the Land of Nod during the formalities in Kingstown.

He was “reflecting deeply on the thoughts being put out” during the speechifying. Hadn’t he been up at six in the morning? The Dublin members of his parliamentary party can testify to that, having been hauled into his office at an ungodly hour so he could give them a referendum campaign pep-talk.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore staunchly stuck up for his Coalition partner.

“I’ve never caught him asleep anyway,” he declared, rounding off his sentence with a muffled snort and sympathetic grin.

Eamon had come in for some stick himself earlier in the day, when Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald took umbrage at a perceived personal insult to her during Leaders’ Questions.

She told the Tánaiste that she was certainly not “twisted”. Which is true. The Dáil bar hadn’t even opened when she was on her way to the Chamber.

It was all a misunderstanding. Eamon had been referring to her party’s twisting of quotes from leading economists who have advocated a Yes vote to the fiscal treaty by making it appear like they are opposed to it.

Which brings us, reluctantly, back to Government Buildings and the post-troikal musings of Noonan and Howlin.

The Minister for Finance was asked for his take on Sinn Féin’s barefaced misappropriation of the economists’ quotes for their own ends.

A Noonan one-liner is always flagged by a slow-growing smile and a drawled “yah know” as an opener.

He thought it a mistake that Sinn Féin “as people who have such long experience of the courts system” were “drawing witnesses from the prosecution in to justify their position”.

That drew a few laughs.

Howlin, meanwhile, broke the record for the number of times the word “quantum” can be used in a press conference.

Stop it, Minister.

The future of the Permanent TSB was discussed in detail. The “bad bits” of the institution, which the Government wants to use as a third retail bank “may end up in a special purpose veh-hi-kil” said the Minister for Finance.

Overall, the message from the two Ministers was that their plan to bring the economy back on track is proceeding on schedule and the troika is happy with the progress.

“The programme is working and things are normalising,” said Michael. “We have a lot shorter road to travel.”

“We have supplied the instruments we want to use,” said Brendan.

A double bass, perhaps, for Noonan? A piccolo, maybe, for Brendan? At least they thought they’ve been making good music with the Bailout Boys.

It’s all about “the stimulus” now.

That and a few loud blasts on the instruments, should keep everyone awake.