For years, Ivor Callely has believed that all publicity is good. Now he is learning to his cost that this is not always so, writes Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent
No god, no religion, no nobility can survive ridicule, Mark Twain once said. The same, perhaps, could be said of the increasingly embattled Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Ivor Callely. For the pinstripe-suited politician the last few weeks have been awful, with criticism of his management style and reports of his failure to get on with staff. This week, his constituency secretary, Niall Phelan, handed in his notice and it was later revealed that Callely tried to change his mind by offering him a car. A fortnight ago, his private secretary, Una McDermott, requested a transfer out of his department after objecting to being told by Callely to attend a political function.
Despite the lack of charity involved, colleagues, opponents and onlookers in the Dáil this week quietly chuckled about the Dublin North Central TD's discomfiture. It is difficult not to laugh at Callely sometimes. Earnestly enthusiastic, full of his own importance, and "flash", he frequently makes it not only just too easy, but unavoidable.
Last month, speaking to host Alison O'Connor on RTÉ Radio 1's Round Midnight programme, he once again voiced his ambitions to be taoiseach, though he acknowledged that he would need a few other Cabinet posts beforehand. For most people who know him around Leinster House, the really frightening feature of all of this is not so much that he would say it, but rather that he actually believes it.
Up to now, Callely has had a lot of publicity that has made him look foolish - leading to the nickname "Ivor the Engine" - but it has never bothered him. It does now. The word "affable" is often used to describe the Clontarf man, and it is used fairly, because Callely can be likeable and engaging, though he has made few real friends in the Dáil.
Often, however, the charm is self- serving, designed only to garner votes and lasting only until someone more important and useful comes along. Until now, it has served his needs, since he has been a prodigious vote-gatherer in Dublin North Central, a constituency where only the toughest tend to survive.
Born in Dublin in 1958 and educated at St Paul's, Raheny, Callely was first elected to Dublin City Council in 1985. He quickly became known to colleagues as "Ivor The Conniver", one of the many unflattering nicknames he has acquired.
"He never engaged. He was a real magpie, a snatch-and-grab merchant. If he said something, everyone spent their time trying to figure out his motivation," said one council member of the time.
His entry to the Dáil came just four years later, alongside Fianna Fáil running mates Charles J Haughey and Vincent Brady, when he won 5,340 first- preference votes. Haughey took a dim view of the pushy young Callely at first, but the FF leader mellowed towards him somewhat as Callely built a formidable local loyalty.
With Haughey's retirement in 1992 and his replacement in Dublin North Central by his son, Sean, Callely increased his vote tally by 600, even though Labour's Derek McDowell swept the boards with more than 10,600 votes.
The loyalty has continued. In 1997, Callely received the State's seventh- highest vote, doubling his previous share and topping the poll. In 1999, he took 30 per cent of the Clontarf vote in the local elections. However, the 1997 achievement did not bring the desperately wanted ministerial reward, though he did receive the consolation prize of being appointed chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business.
The former pharmaceutical salesman is regarded even by enemies as one of the Dáil's hardest constituency grafters in a business known for long hours. Callely tends to operate like a rural TD rather an urban one, turning up at funerals, writing to notify constituents of planning decisions, getting to know thousands by name. It has served him well.
Indeed, stories about the Minister of State's letter-writing habits are legion. "Often, he writes to people on both sides of a row, telling both that he agrees with him," says one constituent.
In 1994, for example, he became embroiled in a row over a Clontarf sports club which had applied for a bar licence, much to the irritation of Seafield Road locals. Both sides were promised his support, and both sides quickly learnt that he was playing both sides. But the indefatigable Callely motored on, oblivious to criticism.
By now, Callely had begun the habit of sending out expensively produced Christmas cards featuring himself, his wife Jennifer (née Foley) and their three children in festive settings. Each year, the cards were eagerly awaited in Leinster House and, for some, became collectors' items, though not perhaps for the reasons Callely would have wished. The family's large, well-appointed St Lawrence Road home, inherited by his wife from her parents, who ran a hairdresser's and a chemist's shop on Clontarf Road, featured frequently in the cards.
Occasionally, he came to national attention as he railed against asylum seekers and refugees and defended Dublin taxi drivers (some of his strongest supporters) from competition. Famously, in 1992, he described himself in the Dáil chamber as "a young, sexually active person". On another occasion he advocated that gardaí should use Rollerblades on the beat.
In his filings over a number of years to the Dáil's register of members' interests, Callely has declared his ownership of one other house, in St David's Wood, Artane, Dublin 5. By 1998, he notified the register that he had the use of an Alfa Romeo 166 car from Alfa Romeo (Fiat) Ireland, while he had also been given a Nokia Communicator mobile phone for "a trial test and evaluation".
In 2002, Callely made political progress when he became Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, with special responsibility for older people. His difficulties with colleagues were not long in emerging, though it must be said that no civil servant has ever made a formal complaint against him to either employer or trade union. Relations, nevertheless, were poor.
"He has a habit of acting like a mini- Napoleon, peremptorily raising his hand to beckon people to come to his side, shouting," said one source.
By the end of his time at Health and Children, Callely's communications with Jimmy Duggan, at the time the department's leading official on the elderly, were almost non-existent, according to several sources.
The then minister for health, Micheál Martin, intervened, telling Callely that Duggan had served many a minister well before him. "He gave him a bollocking," The Irish Times was told.
The organisations representing the elderly were even less impressed, becoming irritated both by his relentless pursuit of publicity photographs and by his inability to turn up on time.
Paul Murray, of Age Action Ireland, is blunt: "While at first we were hopeful that his energy - which was obvious in his constituency work - would transfer to ageing issues, we never found him to be totally engaged or to fully understand the issues in an Irish or international context. He was difficult to deal with. Overall, his performance was disappointing. The real losers were the elderly."
In September 2004, Callely transferred to the Department of Transport and quickly started making headlines. Last February, Callely told the Irish Independent that the Government would spend €6 billion in Dublin on a metro, a second airport terminal, new rail commuter lines and tunnels.
The Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, who was then in his own difficulties over his decision to award a PR contract to Monica Leech, was apoplectic, seeing it as a play by the junior man to take his place. Still angry in the Dáil a few days later, Cullen delivered a withering putdown, saying that he was "blessed" to have such a junior minister, even though he was one who overran with enthusiasm.
"Some of his recent pronouncements to the fourth estate are just guesswork, and are not based on any fact," he declared, to raucous laughter from both sides of the House.
Since then, Cullen has ordered officials to tell Callely the bare minimum, though that did not prevent the Minister of State grabbing State-paid publicity from the launch of Operation Freeflow. So far, Callely's Christmas cards, which are understood to feature the Minister of State, his wife and family peering out of the Dublin Port Tunnel, have not yet been posted.
The metaphor is, perhaps, accidentally appropriate, because he most certainly is in a hole. Bertie Ahern, though rarely quick to sack ministers, will sit and watch Callely's actions carefully in the coming days.
The Callely File
Who is he?
Ivor Callely, Minister of State at the Department of Transport and Fianna Fáil Dublin North Central TD
Why is he in the news?
Officials have developed the habit of quitting, on the grounds that he is impossible to work with
Most appealing characteristic?
Often likeable, and charming
Least appealing characteristic?
Self-importance
Most likely to say?
I'll sort that for you, no worries
Least likely to say?
If you don't mind, I'd rather not be in the photograph