the late lamented

Coffee with Giovanna in the Croissanterie at the Stephens Green Centre.

She says: "I thought your obituary for that ambassador guy was mean."

Uh oh.

This again.

She is referring to my mildly critical assessment of the late civil servant Padraic MacKernan, who at various stages of his career held Irish ambassadorships to France, to America and to the European Union, and finished up in a grandiosely titled sinecure, to wit Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

I had noted that mandarin like civil servants often hold positions of exponential power within Ireland and that the Irish people generally speaking have absolutely no idea who the hell they are.

I had suggested that such anonymous civil servants are effectively governing us from the shadows.

I had also noted that while representing us as ambassador, this particular civil servant, a self styled humanist with no predilections for Christianity, was perhaps not that representative of us.

I hadn't bothered noting that when MacKernan had a clash with our elected Minister for Foreign Affairs, it was the elected Minister who issued the mollifying public statement, or as they say in the civil service, climb down.

Padraic MacKernan was a very powerful man.

I look at Giovanna.

I say: "What do you mean?"

She says: "You just didn't like him because he wasn't a Catholic."

I say: "That wasn't my point at all. My point was that I believed he would have been unlikely to be capable of representing my own views about anything. And my major point was that such a powerful person could hold so many positions of influence within Ireland and that most of us had never heard of him till he died."

She says: "I still think it was mean."

I say: "Do you think there should be no critical assessment of powerful people when they die?"

She says: "You didn't know him."

I say: "I didn't pretend to know him. I am a commentator on events. I make it my business to write informed principled commentary about events and about people. I know how much you as a communist despised Ronald Reagan. Do you seriously pretend that when Ronnie died, no one should have written critical assessments of him except people who knew him personally? Do you seriously think that the only assessments of MacKernan should have been the brain dead laudatory drivel in the Irish Times and the Irish Independent?"

She says: "But you didn't even know this guy existed."

I say: "That was my point. That was my point exactly. My point was that powerful people in Ireland exert influence over our whole society for decades and we never know who they are."

She says: "I still think it was mean."

Around us the Croissanterie clattered with life.

I felt a great gulf opening up between me and Giovanna.