The Coalition at Mid-Term

WHAT WOULD CHARLIE HAVE DONE" WAS THE QUESTION ONE CABINET minister posed whenever preparations for the National Plan ran up against a problem. And the plan produced was Charlie-shaped, guaranteed to float any government past the rocky waters of immediate electoral crisis. The Great Survivor paid it its greatest compliment when after a stinging attack on its lack of purpose, he admitted it would keep them in office for the next eighteen months, and more important, keep him out.
Keeping Charlie out has been the name of the game. It's difficult to point to any other aim of this government over the last two years. There have been few ideological clashes between the two coalition parties - survival demands the neutering of both instinctive party differences. The extent to which John Bruton is disillusioned and alienated within the cabiinet is a measure of the distance the government has travelled along the road to political exxpediency, and away from the purposeful thrust of the brief '81-'82 coalition.

Disgruntlement within the cabinet can be traced mostly to unease among Fine Gael connservatives - Bruton, a radical conservative who is frustrated by the.lack of direction; Patrick Cooney, publicly humiliated by FitzGerald's decision to end army participation in the Armistice Day celebrations and like many of the old guard annoyed that FitzGerald appointed Peter Sutherland to the EEC Commission despite party requests that it be offered to Mark Clinton, Peter Barry who has been making the government running on Northern Ireland policy and who has been discreetly distancing himself from the Taoiseach, as his Foreign Affairs brief allows him to do, and no one should know more about that than Garret FitzGerald.

But disgruntlement doesn't make a crisis, it merely leaves the edges and t~e nerves frayed. A quick repair job was attempted with the carefully-prepared launching of the national plan.

Amidst all the razzmatazz and stage management of the launch and the follow-up lecturing of the country by government ministers, few actually noticed that in econoomic terms the plan did not represent one step forward, but two steps back.

For, just two years ago, the incoming government was forged on the basis of the Joint Programme for Governnment. This set two principal economic targets. First, the Government pledged itself to "halt and reverse" the rise in the level of unemployment, which then stood at 170,000. Second, it promised to phase out the current budget deficit by 1987.

Measured against these targets of two years ago, the National Plan is already a failure, before it even gets off the ground. For it accepts first that unemployment will actually rise slightly from its current level of over 210,000 over the course of the plan while the target of phasing out the currrent budget deficit has been jettisoned altogether. The Plan hopes to reduce the deficit to five per cent of national income by 1987.

Above all, it is a plan without any plans. It contains virrtually nothing in the way of policies.

And what about the Labour Party's influence on the plan and on government decisions over the last two years? Well, Labour always argue that their job in government is to curb the inhumanity of Fine Gael, essentially a negative influence. Ask not what we have done for our country, but what we have managed to stop Fine Gael doing. Perhaps with the exception of Barry Desmond, they see it as their duty to block spending cuts on the principle that spending is good, cutting is bad. It's the sort of vulgar statism that gives socialism a bad name, and allows Fianna Fail to claim, by those standards, that they are as socialist as the Labour Party.

LABOUR'S MAJOR CLASH WITH FINE GAEL over the last two years was over the size of the 1983 budget deficit. After refusing to turn up for a cabinet meeting, a gesture of such hamfisted gaucherie, sniffed a contemptuous Fine Gael aide, that it showed Dick Spring hadn't even gained his wings as a county councillor, Spring persuaded FitzGerald that the deficit had to be left at the higher figure of £900 million. This was regarded by the Labour Party as a major victory, on the basis that high spending is beautiful and bigger spending is even better.

But there is no reason why judicious cutting can't reeallocate resources to the people most in need of it, the people Labour claim to represent. A perfect example of such judicious reallocation arose only this August with the decision to halve food subsidies. Food subsidies benefit the rich as well as the poor and the £40 million saved by trimming the subsidy could be used more selectively to help the needy as with Barry Desmond's new Family Income Suppplement. The saving on one hand and the introduction of a new benefit on the other should have been linked, and Labour should have seen that they linked in the public mind.

But the saga of that food subsidy fiasco is a sharp illusstration of Labour's failure to achieve any coherent party performance in government.

The de ision was taken at an August cabinet meeting by Garret FitzGerald. With Alan Dukes safely out of the way, FitzGerald decided to show the youngsters a bit of snappy financial decision-making, cut the subsidies, and departed to pack for his South of France holiday.

The rest of the cabinet were left feeling a little queasy.

John Boland communicated the decision to Joe Jennings of the GIS who understandably insisted on being allocated a Minister to help him break the bad news. Boland went back to look for a volunteer and the remaining government ministers took full cabinet responsibility for the decision that Joe Jennings should find a few beknighted civil serrvants from the Department of Finance to do the dirty work.

What were the Labour ministers at? Why didn't they insist on the joint announcement of the subsidies cut and the new benefit with a proper government presentation of the argument?

And that wasn't the only decision taken at that particuular cabinet meeting which suggested that the Labour boys were sleeping on the job. The cabinet, in its collective wisdom also abolished the Land Commission. Labour's Agriculture Committee couldn't believe its' ears. The commmittee had produced the previous May, an agriculture policy document which argued not only that the Land Commission was central to agricultural development, but that its role should be extended. And the cabinet members had been. briefed on the document by committee chairman Senator Michael Ferris.

Labour's right hand, it seemed, was picking its nose in cabinet while Labour's left hand produced policy docuuments. But that's not the end of the matter. At a stormy meeting within the last month, the committee ploughed into its forgetful ministers insisting that the decision be rescinded. The cabinet members have promised that they will try to reverse the process.

Party policy can be such a nuisance when you're busy in government, and there are too many presumptuous people who expect a connection between party policy and cabinet decisions. In this regard, the Labour Party are truly secular. They rarely allow party considerations past the door of the cabinet room.

LABOUR DID, ONE ACCEPTS, MANAGE TO INNsert a land tax, or as it is called, farm tax, in the national plan. But the principle of the tax was a cepted from the beginning by Fine Gael who knew that Labour needed the appearance of farm taxation. The reality was another matter. Fine Gael eventually pared the taxaation down to £10 per adjusted acre with a threshold of seventy adjusted acres. In the final week before the publication of the plan after an anti-IFA outburst by Ruairi Quinn, the burden was further lifted off farmers by raising - ie hreshold to eighty acres. Farmers' leaders, when briefed o he plan, could hardly believe their luck. The tax would J ~lg in. in its first year, no more than £60 million, a target which would have been reached easily by the pre-plan inncome tax arrangements.

Within a week, in Dail Eireann, Labour Oireachtas memmbers were voicing dark suspicions that junior agriculture minister, Paul Connaughton was working on further alleeviations for farmers; allowing leased land to be deducted from a farmer's overall adjusted acreage, thereby bringing him below the threshold; allowing exemptions for medical card holders.

There is, of course, another phantom Labour policy which hasn't even appeared in skeleton form: the National Development Corporation whose ghost haunted the '81-'82 coalition; which made a frail appearance in the Joint Proogramme for Government; and which reappeared faintly, like the Cheshire eat's grin, in the National Plan. Labour ideologues, none of whom are in cabinet, would like to see it run a large part of the public and semi-state sector.

But John Bruton, among others, has made clear his trennchant opposition to its running anything but some new mixed enterprise projects with appointed boards interpoolated between the NDC and the actual enterprise to do the day to day management. One gathers the NDC may be left in limbo for quite some time.

This government, promised Garret FitzGerald on a nummber of occasions since he came into office, was to be a reeforming government. There were to be a series of overdue reforms, confided the national handlers, which wouldn't cost anything, making them easier to introduce at a time of stringency.

They were to abolish the legal status of illegitimacy: it hasn't been done.

The promised children's bills haven't yet appeared,

And many members of the cabinet have accepted only reluctantly the proposed liberalisation of the contraception legislation -leave it till after the local elections in May, was the cautious opinion. Barry Desmond had already been told to hold off until after the European elections in June ¨and much good that did the Labour Party.

At cabinet meetings which take place now only once a week, on Thursday afternoons, the table divides generally into conservatives, "left" and liberals: the Taoiseach is flanked by the Attorney General on his right and the Departtment secretary on his left and Dick Spring, the Tanaiste sits opposite him. John Bruton and Austin Deasy sit near one another; Jim Mitchell, Dick Spring, Alan Dukes and Ruairi Quinn sit beside one another; Peter Barry and Patrick Cooney sit near one another.

The core group in terms of carrying and sustaining an economic argument are FitzGerald, Dukes, Spring, Noonan, and Quinn - it's got to the stage where John Bruton is often bypassed. The two who always resist change and urge caution are Patrick Cooney and Liam Kavanagh.

But individually, how do the class of '82 break down and what should be their mid-term report?

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GARRET FITZGERALD

HEAD BOY, SOMETHING of a show-off in class, meddles with the others at prep. Started with the reputation of a man of vision, but the "Please do not adjust your sets" card has been showing for some time now, partiicularly with relation to his promised constitutional crusade. Has come to be obsessed with his rival head boy Haughey in the rougher Christian Brother Establishment . own the road. As a result he's been neglecting his given course of study to engage more and more in vulgar street-fighting, a pursuit for which he has little natural talent, but he's learning. However, he still expects, as a boy from a nice family and a nice home, to be credited with moral superiority.

He has, through his fascination with Haughey, and his need to keep up with his own senior prefect P. Barry, been lured into tasting the intoxicating liquor of green nationalism. He stood at the bar of the New Ireland Forum and knocked it back with the best of them, and he's been suffering a little from the hangover. Since then, he's been trying to prove to his society friends across the water that he's not addicted to the stuff, but that they must underrstand that to turn his back on the habit would leave him open to taunts of "Yah, sissy" and "West Brit snob" from the Christian Brothers brigade.

I am sorry to say that he does have favourites, a factor which causes resentment among the other boys. Approached by a number of the prefects to appoint old boy Mark Clinton to the plumjob at the EEC tuck-shop, he announnced that he had already chosen Porky Sutherland, whose capacity for tuck was self-evident. The odd ink-blot and shouts of croneyism he ignored. When it comes to his friends, it must be said, he is generous to a fault.

He's a forgetful boy, having had on one occasion, it is said, to go back into his house to check whether he'd had his breakfast. Dress and deportment, I'm afraid, still leave something to be desired. It takes eternal vigilance by Matron Prendergast to ensure that he wears matching shoes when representing the school in public.

He does not take correction well, and has the irritating habit of holding up the whole class while he does some indiividual piece of adding or subtracting. He also takes it on himself to challenge the basic figures in the questions set for the class by the Department of Finance, a habit which severely tries the patience of young Alan Dukes who has consistently beaten him for first prize in math.

Overall, a well-meaning boy, but easily misled and not always best served by the indulgence of his friends. He must learn that a promise made should be a promise kept, that talk is no substitute for action, and that plans are made to be implemented, not to be buried by new plans. Could do much better.

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DICK SPRING

YOUNG SPRING IS CLASS representative for the day boys, a group forced on us by circumstances rather than choice, one must point out. Still, he seems to have learned to respect his elders and betters. That may be the forrtunate influence of his rural past where forelock-tugging, one believes, is still quite widely practised. One shudders to think what life would have been like if that common Cluskey boy had remained.

Young Spring well ... dear me, what does one say about young Spring better at games, I suppose, than in class. He lives too far from the school and takes a lot of responsibility at home which, added to being deputy head boy and class representative for day boys, leaves little time for his class work. He has switched from environmental to energy studies with little obvious results as yet. There is a danger that he is taking too much help from tutor Joe Holloway on his Bula project and so may make the same mistake that a previous class did: of believing that the surrvival of Bula is enshrined in Articles 2 and 3 of the constiitution and must therefore be paid not only lip service but a prodigious and unceasing flow of school funds.

He is, however, fiercely loyal to the school, almost as though he wasn't a day boy at all but one of our own Xindeed we may yet convert him. Certain concessions of course, have had to be made to him but there are only two lapses of taste that one can point to: he insisted that the class kitty be allowed to run rather too heavily into debt and sulked under the clock out in the hall until he got his way. He then publicly attacked the chaplain for "rolling back the steps to progress". In truth we didn't mind that too much. The chaplain makes allowances for his backkground and in any case it gives us a reputation for moderrnity.

I do hope, however, that he won't lead his little group of day boys to forget their roots. They will have to go back there in the end, after all, and hopefully there will come a day when we can, well, manage without them.

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PETER BARRY

THE NEATEST BOY IN the class, poised and confiident, he is trusted by his more conservative class-mates to do the right thing. A young man of the world, he mixes easily and holds his green beer better than the more volatile FitzGerald. Charged with handling all the away games for the school, he decided to make a name for himself by concentrating on the old Northern Ireland rivals; gaining popularity with some of the wilder elements in the school and the Christian Brothers lot by leading the "Brits Out" chant from the terraces. Didn't take kindly to FitzGerald's publicly apologising on his behalf when he got a little too stroppy with the captain of the Northern Ireland team, but too well-balanced a boy to sulk.

Commerce is more his cup of tea, but he's been diligent, if not spectacular, in his travels abroad on behalf of the school, relying heavily on his civil servant tutors and manaaging to keep his cool when the Germans got their lines crossed over an EEC team selection.

Respected by the class and an obvious head boy if an immediate crisis were to arrive.

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JOHN BOLAND

THE SCHOOL SNEAK, Boland is charged with reporrting and spying operations on behalf of the class and takes his duties very serioussly. It's his jo b to report all class information to Matron Prendergast. He's an aggresssive boy, but effective, squarring up bravely to the civil service, and facing them down. He has so far managed to establish mobility between departments and promotion on merit, but he's appointed a committee of civil servants to make the actual decisions, which seems somewhat to defeat the purpose.

One of the main assumptions of the national plan is a freeze on public service pay and it will need a fighter like Boland to carry it through, if indeed it's possible. But then he's now managed to achieve a public sector pay moderaation two years in a row.

Boland doesn't particularly want to be liked, which is just as well. He's doing quite well in his present job. It will of course, some day, come to an end, when I suggest that' his natural aggression be harnessed to an equally massive task like the singlehanded hand dredging of the Shannon or the filling in of all the potholes on the Ennis Road.

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JOHN BRUTON

HAS SUFFERED MORE than any boy in the class under FitzGerald's leadership and indeed has good reason to feel aggrieved. Entrusted, initially with the school kitty, he guarded it with such dediication and zeal, disbursing it with such thrift that the more free-spending spirits began to complain. So he was demoted and watched appalled as a freer hand doled out the kitty.

A young man bursting with ideas that he's eager to put into practice, he's become sullen as his proposals on tax credits, more flexible work practices, and reduction of the PRSI burden on employers have fallen on deaf ears. His tendency now is often to block rather than initiate. A boy who believes in free enterprise, he's understood to have grave doubts about the restrictive nature of the Air Transsport Bill and the Local Radio Bill, but nobody's listening.

Feeling himself cold-shouldered, however, his classwork has suffered and he has become too reliant on his civil servant tutors. His Dublin Gas deal was a bad one by any standards, and first the ESB and then the IDA had their way with him. His Industrial White Paper might well have been written by the IDA which is now spending a massive £800 million a year though there are 25,000 less jobs in industry than there were ten years ago. He has even been known to defend Whitegate.

He's too easily discouraged and should stand up for himmself more. But he's a likeable open sort with an endearing schoolboy appetite for the junk food served in the Merrion Row fast food emporiums he frequents - a habit which home cooking and an ulcer may wean him of in time. No longer cherishing leadership ambitions, there have been hints that he might feel happier with Michael Noonan rather than FitzGerald as head boy.

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PATRICK COONEY

COONEY MAY HAVE BEEN I born with a silver pipe in his mouth. He certainly has had few doubts that his view of the world is the correct one. He is the class young fogey, but a very sober one. He is a constant attender at chapel, is a guardian of the rituals and best traditions of the

hool, one of the last supporters of the three piece suit.

And behind that correct waistcoat is a heart of steel. He is too influential a boy to have been excluded from the class elite, but that doesn't mean he likes FitzGerald. Their mutual suspicion is old and deep, and when dealing with FitzGerald, Cooney leaves nothing to chance.

When the abolition of capital punishment came up some rears ago, Cooney was doggedly insistent that FitzGerald, in front of the whole party, accept the principle of a free vote on matters of conscience. His eye was not simply on the hanging issue, which has since been forgotten but on the matter of divorce which he knew was going to arise under FitzGerald. From Cooney's point of view, eternal vigilance is the price of his freedom to act conservatively. He is an intelligent and thoughtful boy, but in terms of his classwork, not very energetic. He has no stomach at all for green peer and was not the only class member to resent FitzGerald's refusal to back him on army participation in Remembrance Sunday ceremonies, because of the cattcalls of the Christian Brothers' boys. Could try much harder.

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AUSTIN DEASY

AUSTIN IS A TRUCULENT boy. He knows this himself, indeed he's used it effectively to frighten the head boy into admitting him to the inner circle. All that sustained anger made FitzGerald nerrvous. For someone who can't have known much about agriiculture, he's done reasonably well. With help from the head boy, he delivered on the milk super levy quota - as for the figures fiasco, he can't be blamed for the fact that Irish civil servants can't count.

His fairly conservative views he expresses quite frankly - he hasn't yet learned to speak gobbledygook - indeed he's resisted taking special fluency classes. He takes a deepply ironic view of life, as though he's looking at Lilliputia. He's never buried importantly behind a mound of papers, or too busy to have a smoke with the boys behind the channging rooms.

He's one of those who feel decidedly uneasy sharing with the day boys, and seems to have developed with Ruairi Quinn the same sort of relationship which existed between Frank Cluskey and John Bruton - they get up one another's party political noses. He keeps a weather eye on the class for any development of overweening political ambition.

An unusual boy, with a black sense of humour, he might try to be kinder to little Eddie Collins.

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BARRY DESMOND

THE SCHOOL SWOT, DESSmond is a mature student who recently discovered the joys of arithmetic and never looked back. Subtraction is his particular thrill and noteebook and pencil in hand he hunts down unsuspecting health boards with the energy of the zealot and one, two, three, cuts their budgets. Having tasted the blood of a few firmly slit soft underbellies, he arrives in class, flushed with success and drives the rest of the boys crazy with his next set of proposals, lovingly supported by columns and columns of those delicious figures.

He works, to put it mildly, his ass off. He's been careful not to antagonise the doctors and looks to his liberal rather than his socialist laurels by pushing strongly in public on the contraceptive issue. He issued the first licence for immportation of IUDs, officiated at the opening of a family planning clinic in his own constituency, and has now finally, after the dragging of cabinet feet, produced a workable verrsion of Charlie Haughey's contraception Bill, one which will get past the conservatives in both government parties.

He's ebullient, chatty, unsquashable, moves with the studied grace of an eighteenth century exquisite. Disapppointed not to be their class representative, he is of course one of the day boys, but he's a Dun Laoghaire day boy. There is a difference.

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ALAN DUKES

DUKES IS A SCHOLARSHIP boy, recently moved to us from another school and still adjusting to the change from functionary to executive. He is technically brilliant, someewhat to the chagrin of Head Boy, but has so far proved unimaginative. Hisconfidence, to innovate however, may develop as he settles in. He's too heavily influenced by his department - not a particularly impressive department in recent years. He's cocky, and not above blinding his classsmates and everyone else with science when he wants to fudge an issue.

He doesn't lose his temper, but treats those who argue with him to a show of patient exasperation, a sort of pity that they are unable to understand his point of view.

He has so far raised PA YE and PRSI to record levels and still the foreign borrowing goes up. It was £3 billion when John Bruton produced his "a better way to plan the nation's finances", it's now £8 billion and will can tin ue to accumulate throughout the period of the national plan.

Unlike Bruton, he is not averse to producing rabbits out of proverbial hats, as he did to make up the final gap in the National Plan, by pulling in dividends from Bord Telecom. The board, however, may refuse to part with their rabbit.

His most assertive political act has been his publicly announced decision to vote against the anti-abortion amendment, a stand which gained him no favour with the party centre and right. It was a bad piece of law, he didn't need to know any more than that, he said, sharply avoiding the morass of ethical and medical argument.

But he is popular with the other boys for a more personal reason. He enjoys himself and has an unexpectedly Rabeleesian sense of humour when he's off duty.

Could show more flair and more patience with his duller classmates.

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GEMMA HUSSEY

LIKE ANY WOMAN IN AN all male class, Gemma, the school pet, suffers from overrprotectiveness on one hand, and some resentment on the other. "Oh Garret, I couldn't possibly" mimicked one male colleague imitating Gemma's protest to the head boy about some proposed cut in her budget. Protective FitzGerald may be, but Hussey has proved a more efficient Minister for Education than the Department has seen for some years (Education after all had five ministers in one and a half years), and has been one of a small group of cabinet ministers ready to get innvolved in matters outside her own brief.

She's incurred the wrath of the teachers for the cutting of free school buses, and teacher numbers. But even the I teachers' unions - and theirs is not the only view in educaation - accept that she has at least got the Department ticking over again, reduced the ad hoccery, appointed innspectors and begun the process of reviewing curricula.

She's also made sex discrimination a sensitive issue in schools though teachers argue that staff cuts make it immpossible to offer choice to girls . . . funny how the boys seem to manage.

She's been reasonably good on women's issues. Works well, could be a bit more imaginative, and should be able to persuade her husband, and other members of the cabinet, including Garret FitzGerald, to do her the basic justice of resigning from sexist clubs like Fitzwilliam.

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JIM MITCHELL

KNOWN AS "FIXER" BY the other boys, young James has a reputation for wheelerrdealing. A great gangling boy with a regrettable tendency to bluster, he can trade in chewing gum against marbles, space invaders guns against a ticket for the match. He has been approached to get boys off prep and the punishment list. It was for this reason,

perhaps, that he was moved from IIC school discipline, to IIC school bus where he has been trying to keep his bib clean.

However, there are serious doubts that he is up to drivving the, bus and fears that much of the time it drives itself. He failed to implement the McKinsey report on CIE, or his own reorganisation proposals published last year. There are now new National Plan proposals which he must pursue.

Something of a big mouth, he has the unhappy knack of tangling with those most likely to pulverise him. He raised his fists on one occasion to Sean Doherty of the Christian Brothers lot and had to run for cover with a bloody nose. He's now taking on Desmond O'Malley on the Air Transport Bill and is likely to be left in very small pieces on the floor of parliament without too many class mates running to help him.

Should think a little harder.

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LIAM KAVANAGH

KAVANAGH IS THE BOY who fills the inkwells and keeps the books cupboard tidy, the sort of boy who gets on quietly with his duties while the others argue. He has considerable influence among the day boys and he decided that young Spring should be elected their representative.

He is tightlipped and guarded, never shows his cards. He sets limited objectives and tries to fulfill them, he's more a functionary than an executive.

Politically he's a syndicalist belonging to the rural Transport Union wing of the day boys, a fact which has caused some tension in the past between him and the Workers Union Head, Paddy Cardiff.

Like his uncle before him, he gives his Wicklow home top priority.

Has had no outstanding achievement in either Labour or Environment but is probably the steadiest hand to put to the hornet's nest of local government re-organisation.

Dull, but reliable.

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MICHAEL NOONAN

MICHAEL IS THE BOY Most Likely To Succeed, the head boy's chosen prince, the class Smartie. Right from his first day he showed how assuredly those nimble little feet could pick their delicate way through a minefield. He knows when to look for publicity and when to avoid it - he understands that a Justice Minister must be active but not too zealous. Charged with the school's main legisslative project, the Criminal Justice Bill, he pushed it through inexorably giving short shrift to the liberal objections, and has been ruffled only in recent weeks as allegations of Garda brutality made the public uneasy. But then Michael would reassure the public by reflecting their unease, it's a good trick. He won't change the powers in the bill.

Outside the school his reputation has rocketed but there are some class members who would dearly love to kick in appealing baby face. He's been seen as particularly arrogant at parliamentary party meetings. He has an aptiitude for maths and would dearly love to take Dukes' place. Despite his unpopularity in the parliamentary party, he's seen as a future head boy.

Excellent but smug. A vigorous debagging in the quad mightn't go astray.

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PADDY O'TOOLE

I HAD TO THINK QUITE hard about O'Toole and then I realised that he's the boy who's hiding in the back desk behind the map of Connaught. We had hopes for O'Toole. He seemed to handle the sacking of the recalcitrant Udaras Chief Executive with a cool head, presenting a reasonable case on television. Since then he's hardly said a word that one can remember. A dose of salts or syrup of figs may help that sluggish feeling. .

We're worried about O'Toole. Would he be happier elseewhere?

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RUAIRI QUINN

BRIGHT AND BUSHYYtailed, or should one say bald and bushy-tailed, Quinn can hardly contain his excitement at being allowed to sit up at the cabinet table. Mind you we'll have to measure him for long trousers. This is after all the upper sixth. He was placed next to Alan Dukes in the hopes that the scholarship boy would overawe him, and pour periodic pots of tea on his head like the doormouse at the Mad Hatter's party. But he's an opinionated little nipper with a contribution to every discussion. He's been told to give fewer instant bright ideas and more considered memos. So far he's been too busy impressing the bigger boys to make much impact on his class work and it's not too clear what he's up to in the Department of Labour. Indeed he spends too much time sketching in class, cariicaturing the other boys. The head boy loves his little doodles, even collects them. It's fun, but is it work?

He's a natural tease, not above taunting the Deasy Boy who will one day beat him up behind the changing rooms. He's proud to be a day boy, and constantly fights their cause. The class would prefer if he didn't get into quite so many street brawls with farmers and clergymen but they've begun to accept that every school has a natural gurrier and young Ruairi is ours. •

How Brendan Flynn, property tycoon and prominent member of Fianna Fail, found himself lying backwards across a desk being interrogated by ~panish police about the murder of his business partner