Voice of the Irish Sunday Mirror: Goodnight Mr Noonan, your baggage

Sunday Mirror, May 19, 2002

BERTIE'S return to office was probably the worst kept secret of the election - but the collapse of Fine Gael under Michael Noonan's leadership most certainly was not.

For the party to depose John Bruton and elect a new leader so close to a General Election did not smack of good political tactics.

But to take on Michael Noonan with the baggage of his disgraceful conduct in the case of Hepatitis C victim Bridget McCole case was sheer lunacy.

Women, especially, would have had that brave women's death in the back of their minds when they went into the polling booths on Friday.

At the time of the infected blood scandal Noonan knew that by holding out over compensation payments and backing the State against the People he was in the wrong.

As Minister of Health at the time, he could have become a hero by standing up in the Dail and giving the vicitms of the scandal the money they deserved instead of dragging them through the courts.

Instead he has become a political zero.

Under him, Fine Gael are now all but wiped out as a political force in Ireland.

The old loyalties of Civil War politics are gone, consigned to the dustbin of history.

So the electorate, happy with the way Ireland is being run, stuck with Bertie and his partners the PDs.

Those who were not happy looked for an alternative - but did they find it in a radical and dynamic Fine Gael? No.

Fianna Fail beat them at every turn in an election campaign that seemed concluded before it started.

Noonan performed well in the TV debate with Bertie but he never managed to land a knockout punch on the Teflon Taoiseach.

Good government needs an effective opposition as a watchdog - but the PDs seem to have done a good job of that from the inside.

If Fine Gael are going to recover from this political wipe-out then they've taken the first step with Michael Noonan's honorable resignation announcement last night.

Nice guy - but then nice guys don't win all the time.

H

SOME people pay a lot of money to see naked women cavorting on a stage... but probably not the type of people who went to the dance festival staged at Dublin's Project Theatre last week.

The arty crowd thought they were going to see a performance from a French dance group. But what did they get instead?

Three naked women on stage drawing on each other with crayons, joined by a man... who ended the performance by urinating in the corner.

And they call THAT art?