Geoghegan-Quinn can't hack dinner with scribes

BARBARA Nolan, the European Commission’s representative in Ireland, is hosting the annual Christmas lunch of the Association of European Journalists in the St Stephen’s Green Club on Wednesday.

One notable absentee will be Ireland’s EU commissioner, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. All previous commissioners have been guests at the lunch over the years, including Pee Flynn and Charlie McCreevy.

It has not gone unnoticed among the hacks that Ms Geoghegan-Quinn appears to be snubbing them for the second year in a row.

It was a topic of some discussion at the commission’s annual drinks in their Molesworth Street headquarters on Thursday night. The general consensus was that Máire blames the media for pressurising her last year into giving up her substantial Oireachtas and ministerial pension (worth over €100k a year) while she was Ireland’s commissioner and drawing a very hefty salary.

So why would she want to dine with them? Over the course of her term of office, she stands to lose about half a million euro in pension payments.

But of course, it could be that our EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science is probably just far too busy with her work to attend.

Although she does tend to remember slights and has a long memory.

On a recent trip to Brussels, Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte was spotted by Geoghegan-Quinn, who rushed over to lavishly greet him.

"A Phádraig! How is everyone in the Huffington Post?" cried La MGQ, to the obvious mystification of the two department officials with the minister.

What could she have meant? We have to go back to 1996, and two Dáil exchanges between Rabbitte and the then Fianna Fail deputy. Pat called Máire “The Arianna Stassinopoulos of Connemara” and it was not meant as a compliment.

This was a reference to a literary work published that year by Ms Geoghegan-Quinn – a thoroughly woeful romantic novel called The Green Diamond.Just two sarcastic mentions from Pat in the Dáil, 15 years ago, but she hadn't forgotten it.