The Government that fails to prepare, prepares to fail: a few tips on giving the 'just right' impression should the man from Washington ever drop by, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
MY PROBLEM is not with the arrival of the guy from the IMF – should he ever drop by. My problem is with what we’re going to do with him when he gets here. So far I’ve decided Dublin Castle, yes; Farmleigh, no. Clonmacnoise, yes; Newgrange theme park, no. Can you see where I’m going with this?
On the one hand you don’t want the IMF guy to think that we have loads of money. On the other hand you don’t want the IMF guy to think that we once had loads of money and flushed it into a barely functioning sewerage system which is now leaking onto the finest beaches in Europe. You have to say that it’s a delicate balance. I’m thinking Dublin Bay prawns – whatever they are – and not oysters. We’re channelling authentic and modest here. It’s very important that the IMF doesn’t get the impression that we have ruined the little – yes, yes, the very little – we started out with. We have to show the IMF guy that are we uniquely Irish – like no one else – and at the same time worth protecting – like the panda.
Visitors love the uniquely Irish thing. We are uniquely Irish and we need to show this to the guy from the IMF. For this reason, he cannot be allowed to walk up Grafton Street, under any circumstances. We don’t want the IMF guy thinking that he’s in Manchester and giving all that money to blooming Lancashire instead.
Management, management, management is what the visit of the IMF guy is going to take. The country that fails to prepare, prepares to fail. All it’s going to require is a little bit of thought.
The citizentry is going to have to go that extra mile, or kilometre. Whatever. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we are ready, and we’re working from decisions that have unanimous support. The IMF guy must be met at the airport by the Garda Band (bless them) and by our Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, TD. All other politicians will be under arrest for the duration of the IMF tour, and housed for the duration in that luxurious storage facility which contains the electronic voting machines.
From the airport the IMF guy should definitely be taken to a real shopping centre, to see how we can spend, spend, spend. And it probably should be Dundrum shopping centre, or possibly that one in Athlone. Some shopping centre that was purpose-built, and I don’t mean the ones in Newry. Because we’re trying to do history here, but not recent history. What can I say – it’s complicated. Here is a handy rule of thumb: Show the IMF guy nothing that was built since the Brits left, except perhaps the bigger shopping locations and the National Conference Centre – and then for God’s sake don’t let him use the lav.
Or the Luas. Yes, the Luas! Oh, thank you, God. The guy from the IMF would absolutely love the Luas and we can let him ride up and down in it as much as he likes – Green Line only.
On the other hand he is not permitted to travel on buses or trains or even the Dart. There will be Special Forces on duty to prevent the guy from the IMF falling into the hands of a taxi driver; and these Special Forces are prepared to die rather than let that happen.
At some point, presumably, he’ll have to go to Cork. I say Cork because the guy from the IMF can’t go to Galway – all those roundabouts would do for us entirely. So it’ll have to be Cork really. Or Limerick. He could go to a Munster home game in Thomond Park. That would do nicely, actually. Munster don’t even have to win – we don’t want the IMF guy having any atypical experiences – and the lads are very charming.
So, the rule of thumb is: Show the IMF guy nothing that was built since the Brits left, except the bigger shopping locations and the National Conference Centre and Thomond Park. And maybe Croke Park. Okay.
The problem is, how are we going to get the IMF guy down to Munster, what with that quite large section of motorway coming up to Nenagh having fallen back down into the bog? He’ll have to be choppered to Cashel. Yes, he can be choppered to Cashel with a member of the Special Forces sitting on each side of him, to obscure any aerial views of ghost estates.
And of course we wouldn't take the IMF guy to the west of Ireland, or The West as we like to call it in The Irish Times, because the ghost estates are so much worse on the way to Mayo and Sligo. Unfortunately for him, the IMF guy might very likely come to the end of his days without having laid eyes on Longford.
Happily, there will no problem finding a hotel for the IMF guy. He could have whole hotels to himself, if he liked. Our problem is going to appear when we try to get all the Polish hotel workers out of lounges and all the Chinese guys out of the kitchen. But we have ways of arranging these things.
It’s just a question now of whether we have enough time to arrange them before the IMF man arrives.