DAIL SKETCH/Frank McNally: Like railway station announcers, Charlie McCreevy is frequently indecipherable.
But he came over loud and clear yesterday as he trumpeted the delayed departure of the Government decentralisation scheme, stopping at Newbridge, Portarlington, Thurles, Mitchelstown, and 49 other towns, en route to next year's local elections. Passengers for Killarney - and the Department of Arts, Sport, and Tourism - should change at Mallow.
Government backbenchers cheered the announcement and jumped on board. But the opposition was sceptical, and decided to wait for the next one, or maybe get a bus. Mr McCreevy's train had no timetable, they'd noticed, and with an allocation of only €20 million, it looked a bit low on fuel too. In autumn 2004, with the elections out of the way, the scheme might be delayed indefinitely by leaves on the line.
Nevertheless, as Mr McCreevy established an implementation committee to "drive" the project, the opposition looked a bit forlorn standing on their (anti- Government) platform. Details of implementation might be vague, but the breadth of the plan - eight full Government departments, ministers and all - was every bit as radical as the Minister claimed. And the mere fact that names had finally been matched to places was designed to capture imaginations, as well as votes.
Particular talking points were the transfer of the Foreign Affairs development agency to Limerick (a bit harsh) and the planned move of 50 Revenue officials to Limerick West, the constituency of Michael Collins. But there were plenty of others. And no sooner had the Minister sat down than there was a mass decentralisation of Government TDs, many of them rushing outside to shout the good news ("I'm on the train!") into mobile phones.
In an emptying chamber, Fine Gael's Richard Bruton acknowledged Mr McCreevy had "pulled a rabbit out of a hat"; while Labour's Joan Burton suggested that this particular rabbit had made so many previous appearances at Government events, the Minister didn't even have to pull it. Both agreed that the plan could run out of steam the far side of June, and that the real story of the Budget was the continued erosion of incomes by stealth taxes and the Minister's failure to widen tax bands.
But with Mr McCreevy well insulated by the late tax windfalls, there was little controversial in this, the seventh "chapter" of his self-styled fiscal epic. The social welfare increases were decent, the lobby to save film tax relief was satisfied, and even farmers refused to be angry last night. The closest he got to contro- versy was in announcing the phasing out of the "Dublin mindset" from Government policy, which at first sounded like bad news for the Taoiseach, but turned out to be just another predicted effect of decentralisation.
In fact, if it hadn't been for this one big idea, chapter seven would have been his dullest yet. And the failure of the subsequent debate to take off was summed up when Ms Burton complained at one point: "This is Christmas pantomime stuff." To which the Greens' Paul Gogarty replied: "Oh no it isn't!"
