obitcheries

Padraic MacKernan: Padraic MacKernan is dead. His name remains largely unknown to Irish people although he is one of those elusive figures who for the past thirty years wielded vast power over our nation. He governed from the shadows. He never in his life stood for election. As a high ranking civil servant he pulled the puppet strings from the wings while politicians came and went around him. He had more power than any of them. At the pinnacle of his career he was a Senior Secretary in the Department of Foreign Affairs. They styled him Secretary General. But let's face it, head of a government department in a country with a population of three million people, it's hardly the United Nations is it. Before this he was variously Ireland's ambassador to the USA, to France, and to the European Union. Now he's Ireland's ambassador to the after life. Only, he didn't believe in the after life. This week the body of Padraic MacKernan was cremated in Dublin after a humanist ceremony. I don't know what precisely these atheists think is so humanitarian about their atheism. Nonetheless they insist on styling their funerals humanist ceremonies rather than atheistic funerals. Maybe they just like the ring of the word humanist. But the atheist ceremony with which Padraic MacKernan made his farewell lap of honour, demonstrates more than anything else how unrepresentative of Ireland was this man who had for so many years and in so many places, represented us. In spite of the best efforts of RTE, Independent Newspapers and The Irish Times, atheistic funerals remain strictly a minority sport. Various periodicals have been regaling us over the weekend with tales of MacKernan's supposedly great sense of humour. When a Fianna Fail Minister proposed a visit to Indonesia during Galway Race Week, MacKernan is supposed to have said: "You're putting Jakarta before the horse." (How absolutely hilarious. Make that man emperor for life. Oh right. We already did.) His only known other joke related to a British decision in the 1980's to bar the Indian free love guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh from entering the United Kingdom. The guru took refuge in Ireland. A reporter demanded of the Irish Prime Minister Garret Fitzgerald what Ireland intended to do about the situation. MacKernan whispered in Fitzgerald's ear: "Tell him, in Ireland we let Bhagwans be Bhagwans." (How unbearably funny. Oops. There goes one of my sides. Just split right open, I was laughing so hard.) Interestingly enough, the Prime Minister whose strings MacKernan was pulling for that particular quip, was the first one in Ireland to ever advance the enlightened policy of throwing free money at collapsing banks. Good old Garret Fitzgerald. Garret the Good he was sometimes known as. The banks said it with more fervour than most. Three decades ago. He was way ahead of the chase. He gave Allied Irish Banks free money when the adventurism of that corporation overseas first threatened to collapse in a heap around it. And of course Fitzgerald secured no ownership of Allied Irish Banks on behalf of the Irish people while divvying up the wads and paying off Allied Irish Banks' gambling losses. Oh noooo.That's not the way the game is played.  Nearly thirty years ago Fitzgerald concluded that the Irish people should bail out Allied Irish Banks for a net return of nothing. Wait till you see the obituary I write for that bast--d.