The transubstantiation of Eamon O’Cuiv.

Eamon O'Cuiv: Fond of both his own cake and others too.
Eamon O’Cuiv: Fond of both his own cake and others too.

If the Brass Neck Manufacturers of Ireland have any decency in them at all, they’ll be hosting a gala dinner for the deputy for Galway West any day now, such is his contribution to their industry. Speaking in the Dail yesterday, the deputy revealed his apparently long held suspicions about both the EU and the free market itself.

Reading his remarks, one can only wonder whether deep in space there is another planet which is an absolute mirror image of this one, with the one exception that a man of the calibre of O’Cuiv had been given the opportunity to serve in the cabinet and put into practice these apparently long held beliefs. True, we would have had to pay this mirror image O’Cuiv a substantial cabinet minister’s salary and pension, but at least we could have gotten the value of seeing him, day in, day out, valiantly battle in the cabinet against the twins gods of federalism and Mammon. Still, we can always dream.

Having said that, there’s form within Fianna Fail on this sort of “My cake and I’ll have a scoop of yours too”. When Dev wasn’t busy stealing newspaper shares he was busy betraying Collins and then raising up an armed insurrection against the legitimate government of the state, to oppose a treaty which ten years later he uses to get what he wanted in the first place. At least today’s FF strokes aren’t getting people’s heads blown off. One suspects the new euroscepticism in Fianna Fail will be similar, lasting all the way to the cabinet door. Anyone remember Bertie’s committment to a referendum on NATO’s Partnership for Peace in 1997? Neither did he, apparently.