There are, as we all know, two Irelands. One is a very small place, an intimate society in which everything overlaps and everybody is connected.
In this collegial nation, it is perfectly natural for politicians, journalists and business people to see each other as friends first and public figures second, for the etiquette of intimacy to take precedence over the forms of official ethics.
It is unremarkable for the second and third most powerful members of the Government to accept the hospitality in the Cote d'Azur of a wealthy businessman who is at the same time lobbying the Government on a number of important issues. And if concerns are raised about such cosy closeness, the Taoiseach thinks nothing of it, regretting only that he and the rest of his colleagues were not invited.
And then there is the other Ireland. It is, by contrast, a very large country. Large, not simply because it includes most of the population, but because there is no trace of intimacy or familiarity, never mind of friendship, in the way it is regarded by the apparatus of power. It deals with the State at a remote distance. The State deals with it as a far-flung people, out there somewhere in the rough hinterlands.
When the citizens of the small Ireland have legitimate concerns about public policy - as, for example, Ulick McEvaddy does - they have the means to articulate them. They have access to ministers and to the media. In this sense, it doesn't much matter that the Tanaiste and the Minister for Finance received Mr McEvaddy's hospitality. Anyone with Mr McEvaddy's millions can command the ears of those in power, whether or not they have the odd villa to spare. The citizens of the larger country, though they, too, have legitimate concerns about public policy, are often just a faint blip on the radar screen.
Consider, for example, Mary Harney's attitude to a group of people whose lives she affects most profoundly in her capacity as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment: those who work on the Community Employment Schemes (CES), for which she has responsibility.
In the weeks before she headed off to the south of France, Mary Harney made two important policy statements. On July 23rd she issued a press release on community employment. On July 27th she made a speech to the plenary session of the Partnership 2000 review in Dublin Castle, dealing largely with the same subject. In neither of these statements did she bother to disclose a fact that is of very immediate importance to many people.
At the Cabinet meeting on July 22nd it had been decided to cut the number of places in the Community Employment schemes - a mainstay of the long-term unemployed and of most voluntary organisations - by 4,500. But Mary Harney did not announce this cut. The first public confirmation of the fact came while the Minister was on the Cote d'Azur. On August 18th her Department issued a statement in response to a press release from the Scheme Workers Alliance, confirming that "community employment is being reduced on a phased basis over the next five years."
There is nothing in itself strange or reprehensible about a planned and agreed reduction in the CES. As unemployment falls, it makes sense to look for better ways of bringing those who have been left behind into the economy. A cut of 2,500 places, announced in the 1998 budget, was agreed with the social partners on condition that the resources released by this measure would be reinvested in other programmes for the long-term unemployed and that a broader commitment under Partnership 2000 to create an extra 10,000 places in training and education schemes would be met. A further transfer of 5,000 CES places into a new Social Economy programme has the enthusiastic support of the trade unions and of the community and voluntary sector.
But the new cut of 4,500 places came completely out of the blue. It has not been negotiated with the social partners. It is a flagrant and unilateral breach of Partnership 2000, which promises an additional 10,000 places. It threatens to undo the delicate and sensitive arrangements which have been agreed for the other cuts in the CES.
And, above all, it shows a most extraordinary lack of common decency in the Government's dealings with citizens whose friendship is, apparently, without value. By not even bothering to announce her plans for those at the bottom of the heap, let alone deigning to consult their representatives, Mary Harney has made the gulf between the two Irelands very clear.
It might be argued from the Tanaiste's erstwhile free-market perspective, of course, that the Community Employment Schemes are a bad thing and that they ought to be phased out. But the strange thing is that at the same time as she was deciding to cut the CE Schemes, Mary Harney was also giving the impression in public that she was planning to expand them. The day after the Cabinet decision to cut the 4,500 places, she announced that "from now on eligibility [for the CES] will extend to widows/widowers and adult dependants of long-term unemployed persons".
The impression that the unsuspecting public might have taken from the extension of eligibility is that there will be more places, not fewer.
There are, after all, 93,000 widows and widowers with contributory pensions not currently in the workforce. Letting them take up CE Schemes may or may not be a good idea in itself (and there are good reasons to doubt whether the CES is the best mechanism for older people who want to get back into the workplace), but the effect either way is to create a massive 60 per cent increase in the numbers eligible for schemes.
So, bizarrely and without explanation, Mary Harney is at one and the same time creating a huge new demand for places on these schemes and unilaterally cutting back on the number of places available.
This may be the result of confusion and carelessness, or it may be part of some grand scheme to antagonise the social partners and undermine State provision for the unemployed. But whatever it is, it is eloquent testimony to the order of things in contemporary Ireland.
Policies which affected the economic interests of those within the intimate circles of power would never emerge in this way. There would be a careful dance of proposal and counterproposal, of consultation, lobbying and concession. There would be an unstated, inexplicit but nonetheless extremely powerful assumption that the State should behave towards such citizens with all the sensitivity and consideration that one friend shows another.
But when the economic interests in question are those of the weak and irrelevant, Ireland becomes a cold and distant place. Today, the scheme workers will be on the streets, shouting slogans in an attempt to be heard.
The workers of schemes will be in Government offices, being asked if they prefer tea or coffee and speaking in soft tones to those who are all ears.
For all the good their shouting will do them, the outsiders might as well be in the south of France.