We’ve been working on the Santa Claus issue for a number of weeks now emmm and it’s important to say to all children in the country emmm that we regard emmm Santa Claus’s travels eh as essential travel for essential purposes and therefore he is exempt eh from the need to self-quarantine for fourteen days and should be able to come in and out of Irish airspace and indeed in and out of Irish homes without having to restrict his movement. Eh but I am assured that children should not stay up at night because he does need to social distance. Eh and so people need to eh to keep eh at least eh two metres away at all stage [sic] to make sure that we keep him safe.

What could be worse than a laborious joke? The above passage is from a—speech seems too formal a word—from a collection of words and noises offered by Simon Coveney in November 2020 as Minister of Defence. At the time, the present writer hoped that someone would stand up and shout at him that he was endangering the lives of the citizenry by not requiring Santa to quarantine. The mess of shocked vowels that would have resulted might have been enough to damage Coveney’s career for good. Then again, perhaps not, given the lack of basic speaking skills amongst our political class. Macdara does not pick on poor speakers in his personal life. But here we have a man who inherited his position, who evidently does not think that he owes the Irish people the time it would take for him to train himself, or acquire training, in public speaking. Macdara trained himself, and has seen most of his peers do the same, at least those whose jobs require it. But Coveney cannot confidently string more than a few words together without what linguists call filler. Macdara appreciates the fact that Coveney, who had a stammer as a child, has overcome that affliction. He has seen no evidence of this stammer in Coveney’s speech: what he sees is a man who does not care to do the work that would demonstrate the commitment to public service that he wants us to believe he has.

Coveney’s father was an undistinguished TD and Minister, although he was remarkable for having been demoted for improper conduct in 1995, remarkable in that Irish politicians rarely face consequences for their misdeeds. As the Taoiseach at the time said:

Some have argued that if Deputy Coveney merited demotion he also merited removal from all ministerial office. […] I do not believe it was right, in any circumstances, for Deputy Coveney to have approached the chairman of a State board about a matter that could potentially have benefited the firm in which he had an interest. I fully accept that the approach involved no pressure, but it should not have been made.

What an endorsement, and it amused Macdara in reading through that day’s Dáil discussion to see figures of known Corruption complaining about Coveney’s being allowed to keep a ministerial position.

Coveney Senior changed his will one day in 1998, fortuitously, as he had a fall while out walking a familiar coastal route the following day, and died. This during a period when he was required to discuss at the Moriarty Tribunal his connections to the infamous Ansbacher (Cayman) Ltd, a company too shady even to be called a bank. An offshore account was a standard commodity for the Irish elites at the time, Macdara does not need to spell out why. 

Let us explore what the Irish Times had to say in its report on the matter in 1999:

Mr Simon Coveney, Fine Gael TD for Cork South-Central, has said his late father, Mr Hugh Coveney TD, was the beneficiary of loans granted by Guinness & Mahon bank in the early 1980s.

He said he believed the loans – denominated in US dollars – were sourced at Guinness & Mahon’s Cayman Islands subsidiary, Ansbacher (Cayman), the company alleged to have operated as an unlicensed bank designed to defraud the Revenue Commissioners since the 1970s.

Repeating his denial that his father was ever an Ansbacher depositor, Mr Coveney said the legitimate loans were used to fund a US investment.

“The only dealings that he [Mr Hugh Coveney] ever had with Ansbacher (Cayman) was the fact that he was involved in that foreign investment because Guinness & Mahon would presumably have sourced the dollars from Guinness & Mahon Cayman (now Ansbacher),” said Mr Coveney. “There’s no question of any deposits or other money held with Ansbacher.”

Clear? In fact Coveney Senior had almost one million US$ (in today’s money) in an Ansbacher account. Far be it from your correspondent to fail to quote someone else who has phrased things better than Macdara himself can. This is what the Village Magazine tweeted in 2022: 

Even before he entered politics Simon Coveney lied that Hugh Coveney didn’t have an Ansbacher account.

As Housing Minister he lied that more housing was being built than was the case.

And these days he is forever flickering in that sad half-light where confusion meets mendacity.

The present writer’s mother promised him after the last Fine Gael leadership contest that Varadkar and Coveney make a great team: Varadkar is the tough guy, you see, and Coveney, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, the cunning negotiator. This is perhaps the single most senseless statement Macdara has ever heard on the subject of politics. Varadkar’s virtues were described in the first instalment of Profiles in Scourge. Focusing on Coveney, one wonders how this obvious non-entity has been able to function at all, even in the idiotic halls of Teach Laighean. When he ran for the leadership, he did not seem like he understood what he was actually running for, showing his impatience with the fact that Varadkar had been preparing to run for some time before the contest was formally announced. Varadkar wants power to get a better internship in Washington, but does Coveney have any ideas or thoughts whatsoever? Does he know where he is? The observer feels almost sorry for a man who must have felt forced to stand for the family seat at only 25 years of age, the other five adult siblings being on a round-the-world sailing Adventure at the time, the seventh sibling being too young to stand (or, evidently, to sail). 

Perhaps this life is a nightmare for Coveney. But he has made it our problem, by contributing to our long national nightmare of Misgovernance.