The President, Mrs McAleese, leaves on state visits to Finland and Estonia on Tuesday. Next month she goes to Slovenia and plans are already underway for a major visit to two countries in subSaharan Africa in late autumn, which will focus on the work of Irish missionaries.
In Finland and Estonia the President will be accompanied by Dr Martin McAleese, Minister for the Arts Sile de Valera, secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs Paddy McKernan, Assistant Secretary to the Government Peter Ryan and other officials.
The programme includes meetings with President Tarja Halonen and Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen in Helsinki and with President Lennart Meri in Tallinn, as well as the usual laying of wreaths at war memorials, visits to cultural and technology centres and sightseeing. She returns on Saturday.
Among those the President will meet in Finland is Martti Ahtisaari, a former president and now one of the three arms inspectors in Northern Ireland waiting endlessly for decommissioning. In Estonia Mrs McAleese is expected to refer to their Eurovision win and the fact that they are in the same group as the Republic of Ireland in the World Cup. Estonia is one EU applicant country where Ireland is shortly expected to set up an embassy. Slovenia and Cyprus may also get embassies in the near future. Meanwhile when the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern goes to Brazil and Argentina in July he is expected to announce the Government's intention of opening Ireland's third embassy, after Mexico City and Buenos Aires, in Latin and South America, in Rio de Janeiro.
Ireland has a friend in Italy
Silvio Berlusconi pulled out of a planned visit to Dublin last month when the election campaign got going in Italy. Following visits to Tony Blair in London and Jose Maria Aznar in Madrid, he had planned talks with Bertie Ahern here. Quidnunc is informed that he has great admiration for our economic miracle and wanted to examine how we did it.
Now as Prime Minister designate of Italy, the 59th since the war, he is probably more likely to study our budgetary policy. In addition, Berlusconi and his Forza Italia group in the European Parliament were until recently aligned with FF. Berlusconi's visit to Dublin was promoted by FF MEPs. He is now in the Christian Democrats with Fine Gael, but a coalition partner, Gianfranco Fini of Allianze Nationale, is still in the Union of Europe with FF. There are links between the new Italian government and ours, and it is expected that Berlusconi will side with us, and vice versa, should more budgetary rows arise in the commission. Anthony Coughlan's National Platform - the anti-EU lobby group - has not been slow to comment. Rumours, it says, are already going around Brussels as to how the EU will treat Italy. "Despite Berlusconi's reputation for sleaze and corruption, the EU Council of Ministers is unlikely to take any action. As one of the Big Four of the EU, Italy will escape censure for daring to elect the wrong person, as Austria did, or daring to implement the wrong budget, as Ireland did." Furthermore, continues Coughlan, Fini's Allianze Nationale "is the party that describes itself as `postFascist' and is said to make Jorg Haider's Austrian Freedom Party look moderate."
Celia collectibles
Invitation cards to the reception for Cardinal Connell at Dublin Castle on Monday from the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Celia Larkin have become collectors items. One TD told Quidnunc that constituency organisations around the country are seeking the cards for fund-raising auctions, and one activist believes a single card could fetch up to £200. But to be this valuable the name of the guest must remain on the invite.
Only one of the hosts, Ahern, acted as host of course. Larkin's disappearance into the crowd and failure to greet the guest of honour, for whatever reason, has annoyed liberals, while her name on the invitation has infuriated conservatives. There was no receiving line in the private room where the cardinal, Ministers, spouses and VIPs mingled before joining the general guests. It appears Larkin and several others did not approach the cardinal on this occasion.
Incidently, Michael Smith used be known as "the cardinal" due to his episcopal air. Now, since Cardinal Connell praised his Cabinet colleague, Joe Walsh, at the reception, for his banishing of the FMD plague, he has acquired the "cardinal" title.
No such thing . . .
Our politicians might like to note how the UK parties are treating the press during the election campaign. Poor William Hague hasn't always enjoyed the most favourable coverage, but hacks on his "battlebus" are travelling in style with a steady supply of food, booze and cigarettes. Tory Central Office says the journos will get a four-course lunch with wine every day and a press release provided a sample menu - dim sum to start, then poached Scottish salmon, potato salad, mushroom vinaigrette, roll, butter, strawberry cheesecake followed by Camembert and biscuits, tea, coffee and mints.
But that's not all. When the tour - there are seven buses with state of the art facilities and several flights (Hague himself has a 100-seat fixed wing plane and two helicopters) - returns to wherever the campaign base is for the night, a hot meal and an "open bar" will be laid on. In contrast, reporters on Tony Blair's bus enjoy relatively frugal fare, with fresh fruit and pastries in the mornings and sandwiches and crisps for lunch. There is strictly no alcohol until after the final stop of day.
There is a hitch though. The hacks, or rather their bosses, must pay for their places on the tour. A season ticket with the Tories for the entire four-week campaign costs £10,575 and a "day traveller" is £763.75. An "away day" pass with Labour is £564, without overnight accommodation. Their season ticket is £8,750 per hack. Prices in sterling of course. Maybe our parties, now that brown envelopes are banned and corporate donations severely restricted, could consider this scheme as a new fund-raising method.
China off for Cowen
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, is back at work following his road accident, despite still having his left arm in a cast, but he has pulled out of a visit to China next week. It was felt that the long journey could set back his recovery. Cowen was to attend a meeting of ASEM and a summit of our Asian-based ambassadors. This week DFA officials were searching for a Minister to replace him at the meeting of EU ministers and the foreign ministers of China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brunei. The bilateral elements of Cowen's visit are being rescheduled for the autumn as is the meeting with ambassadors.
Quotable quotes
The Irish are not found wanting in the just-published new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations edited by Antony Jay. Some with most relevance, though, are listed under Anonymous. They include: "He who writes the minutes rules the roost" and "Reorganising the civil service is like drawing a knife through a bowl of marbles".
John Bruton in The Irish Times in 1996: "Ministers are behaving like sheep scattered in a fog on a mountainside". Prionsias De Rossa advocating an amnesty for asylum seekers in 1997: "If the Three Wise Men arrived here tonight, the likelihood is that they would be deported." Dev in 1975: "Women are at once the boldest and most unmanageable revolutionaries."
Gerry Fitt in 1994: "People (in Northern Ireland) don't march as an alternative to jogging. They do it to assert their supremacy. It is pure tribalism, the cause of troubles all over the world." Garret FitzGerald in 1998: "Living in history is a bit like finding oneself in a shuttered mansion to which one has been brought blindfold, and trying to imagine what it might look like from the outside." Maire Geoghegan Quinn in 1997: "I've kept political diaries ever since I went into politics . . . I'd love to do a political memoir, but a lot of people will have to be dead first." Mary Harney, undated: "If you want to push something in politics, you're accused of being aggressive, and that's not supposed to be a good thing for a woman. If you get upset and show it, you're accused of being emotional." John Hume in 1994: "There's a very thin line between dying for Ireland and killing for Ireland."
Jack Lynch in 1970: "I have never and never will accept the right of a minority who happen to be a majority in a small part of the country to opt out of a nation." Conor Cruise O'Brien 1982: "If I saw Mr Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads, with a stake driven through his heart - politically speaking - I should continue to wear a clove of garlic round my neck, just in case."
And Quidnunc's favourite, Seamus Heaney in a 1983 open letter rebuking the editors of the Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry for including him among its authors: Don't be surprised, If I demur, for, be advised My passport's green. No glass of ours was ever raised To toast The Queen.
Quidnunc is at rholohan@irish-times.ie