Coughlan's half-car handmaidens

DÁIL SKETCH:HOW MANY Ministers does it take to run the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment? No, this is not a joke.

The answer is five. Calamity Coughlan and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

There they were yesterday, sitting in a row along the Government front bench during Enterprise questions – Minister Mary and her half-car handmaidens: Jimmy Devins, Sean Haughey, Billy Kelleher and John McGuinness.

In these days of belt-tightening and margin-cutting, they didn’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed.

Mary, Jimmy, Sean, Billy and John were like a line of seals at feeding-time in the zoo, rising up hopefully each time a member of the Opposition tossed across a sprat. Team leader Coughlan snaffled the tastiest morsels, leaving her four juniors to fight over the remaining scraps.

Five of them, and they don’t come cheap.

On the day that saw the publication of the latest unemployment figures – more than 371,000 people out of work and counting – it was comforting to know that the reality of the jobs marketplace hasn’t touched Brian Cowen’s Government.

Tuesday told a similar story when Minister for Health Mary Harney took questions. She numbered Mary Wallace, Máire Hoctor and Barry Andrews in her retinue. John Moloney was the missing junior. Perhaps he found something to do.

Brian Cowen, who suddenly twigged in the past two days that it might be a good idea for him to try and communicate with the great unwashed, is on record saying he is not going to reduce the ranks of his junior ministers.

But he knows he has a battle on his hands to carry public opinion after what will be a vicious budget. It might help his cause if he took another look at Bertie Ahern’s wheeze to create those extra jobs for the boys.

Although at this stage, to be fair to him, he has a lot on his plate with that mini-maxi- supplementary-emergency budget only a week away.

During Leaders’ Questions, there was a curious little moment with Cowen. It lasted just a second, when he was about to launch into yet another peroration on the subject of structural deficits and revenue gaps.

The Taoiseach was explaining he couldn’t give too much away about possible taxation measures in the budget. Brian Lenihan, he said, would disclose all in due course.

“I do make the point, however, that the big stru . . .” And here, Cowen hesitated, just as he was on the point of saying “structural deficit”. Again. He paused, furrowed of brow.

“Phhft, you know, sorry, if I’m using . . . words. But, I mean, the big . . . PROBLEM that we’ve seen in the Government finances in recent months . . . has been the fall-off in tax revenues, so therefore we have to seek to replace those revenues. The structural deficit that we’ve been talking about, in other words, the deficit that is emerging arising out of the reduction in tax revenues . . . ”

And on he went, valiantly trying to explain why the country is on its uppers and what needs to be done to correct the situation.

The Taoiseach, in his fashion, made a good fist of it.

Perhaps the recent Portraitgate media disaster has given him pause to reassess his political bedside manner. Or maybe somebody got Brian by the ears over the weekend and told him to start making sense to people other than the mandarins in the Department of Finance.

Whatever the reason, you could see he was trying very hard yesterday to get his message across.

“If people understand what I’m saying,” he murmured at one point, voice trailing off.

“I hope this gives some indication of the Government’s thinking.”

Keep at it, Brian. People want to understand, need to understand. Keep at it! Fine Gael say they are very keen to pitch in and help. Enda even promised to pay for his own flight over to Brussels so he could use his party’s connections in Europe to help the Taoiseach plead our case for a reduction in VAT levels.

The new conciliatory Cowen huffed and puffed in a manner that verged on gracious. But his backbenchers sneered, highly affronted that any leader of Fine Gael would be so deluded as to think their party would ever, ever, take any assistance from the Blueshirts.

Later in the afternoon, their finance spokesman Richard Bruton bemoaned the lack of mature thinking from the Government when it comes to accepting helpful hints from the Opposition.

Richard – he really is very impressive – launched his pre-budget analysis across the road from Leinster House in the Merrion Hotel.

He delivered a virtuoso performance on the economy. Slides and tables and graphs and pie charts and bullet points to beat the band.

Thing about Richard is you mightn’t know what he is talking about, but you know he knows and that’s enough for you to know. Brian Lenihan, bright and all that he is, just doesn’t engender that same sense of confidence when he pronounces on matters economic.

The Labour Party are launching their long awaited pre-budget package today.

No doubt that like Fine Gael, they will include a reduction in the number of junior ministers among their recommended measures.

Now that Brian Cowen appears to be looking out, rather than in, he will take their proposal on board. In the national interest.