At last the senior Eurocrats in Brussels have decided who is to replace Colm Larkin, who went North to join Seamus Mallon's cabinet in October, in the plum job as director of the EC office in Dublin. Peter Doyle, currently acting head of the unit supervising the commission's representation in member states, is the lucky man. The choice between four serious candidates was being taken just as the commission, and our own Pee Flynn, suffered their downfall. Questions are being asked about what will happen to Flynn's cabinet, the chef Joe Brosnan, who was considered a front-runner for the Dublin job.
Seamus Carroll and Denis Crowley are seconded from the civil service here and may return; others like Michael Scannell and Pearse O'Donoghue, are Euro fonctionaires and will be redeployed within the commission. Of course our new commissioner, whoever that may be, may take on some of them. Meanwhile the caretaker commission avoids all policy decisions and merely gets on with day-today business. Once the Euro elections are out of the way and the new parliament grills the president Romano Prodi and his commission, which will emerge following his consultations with national leaders in June, the new administration should be in situ in September.