Shane Hegarty picks the highs and lows of 2005
The winner
It was a spur of the moment quick pick for a lottery she'd never even heard of. Then, over drinks in Limerick's Track Bar on a Saturday night in July, housewife Dolores McNamara asked a friend to check the numbers, who in turn double-checked it with the pub owner, who confirmed that, yes, Dolores had won the €115,436,126 Euromillions jackpot. Instantly ranked as the 70th wealthiest person in the land, she holed up in a hotel while the press went into overdrive. "I treated myself on the Monday morning," she later told the Limerick Leader, "and had breakfast served in bed." She wasn't the only winner. A taxi driver who ran into the Track on the night, took a quick snap of Dolores mid-celebration, and then went straight to the papers and sold it for €16,000. Through interest alone, Dolores McNamara would have to wait two days to make that kind of money.
The loser
The word Tysabri is one that must send a shudder down the spines of Elan shareholders - although it was rumours that the drug did far worse things that sent the company's shares plummeting earlier in the year. In February, its flagship treatment for multiple sclerosis, as well as Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis, was linked with a fatal rare progressive brain disease. The drug was suspended from the market and the company's value dropped a staggering 70 per cent in one day's trading and 88 per cent before it turned the corner. Its impact was enough to knock an estimated one per cent off the value of the average Irish pension fund. Elan shares have bounced back since then, amid hopes that the drug may return to the market, which will be some consolation to shareholders who watched their investment collapse.
The anti-climax
In the four years leading to the Lions tour of New Zealand, it was confidently predicted that the meeting of the two sides would be so earth-shakingly intense that New Zealand was in danger of splitting into four. And only a minute into the first test, Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu tried to help Brian O'Driscoll to dig his way back to the northern hemisphere. After that, though, the All Blacks humiliated the Lions by running away with the match, and then the series. The travelling 35,000 Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English fans wondered if they should ask for refunds. The adventure, meanwhile, had cost the Lions €20 million. It also did considerable damage to Clive Woodward's reputation, which helped ease the pain for some rugby fans.
The cliché
"Race to the bottom." While generally used to describe working conditions and, later, coverage of Liam Lawlor's death, Michael McDowell reached for it when discussing bank security standards as well as Northern Irish political dialogue. Its greatest champion, however, was Bertie Ahern: October 6th (on Irish Ferries): "It is important for [ Siptu] that we do not get into a race to the bottom and that the protection of employment standards is an important public policy goal." October 22nd (on civil servants): "This Government is no penny-pinching exploiter of a vulnerable workforce. We have no race to the bottom." October 24th (on the media): "Listen, journalists have a job to do but I always think, if there's a race to the bottom, there's dangers in it."
The ad
There's nothing like using religion to sell something that's bad for you as a way of getting yourself noticed. Paddy Power's Last Supper ad had the "Down With This Sort of Thing" brigade in a twist and saw the bookmakers get more media coverage than they could ever have hoped for. It featured Jesus and the apostles (including a Da Vinci Code-inspired woman), playing cards and roulette, with the slogan "There's a place for fun and games". When the complaints rolled in, Paddy Power changed the slogan to "There's a place for fun and games. Apparently this isn't it". By then the company had attracted so much publicity that one wondered if there had been some kind of divine intervention.
The craze
"Fill in the grid in such a way that every row and column and every 3x3 box contains the numbers 1-9". Simple? No. Maddening? Regularly. Addictive? It's the crack cocaine of number puzzles. At the start of 2005, few people knew of sudoku. By June, no newspaper was without it. Books of the puzzles dominated the bestsellers; there are now popular board games and computer games and even Sky One's live sudoku game failed to dampen enthusiasm for it. When one edition of The Irish Times accidentally omitted its sudoku puzzles, it could hardly have received more complaints if it had plastered the Paddy Power Last Supper ad across the front page.
The mistake
The Abbey theatre announced a loss of €900,000 for 2004 only to admit that it had forgotten to include almost €1 million it lost when touring Playboy of the Western World. Artistic director Ben Barnes and managing director Brian Jackson stepped down, and independent consultants later discovered that five separate budgets drawn up for 2005 had projected that the theatre would break even, make a loss or turn a profit. More predictable was the rage from Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue, who instigated a radical overhaul of the theatre's structure. As a farce, the affair was far more enjoyable than The Shaughraun, which was a West End flop. "This disastrously misjudged production proves a night of cruel and unusual punishment by bogus bonhomie," said the Daily Telegraph.
The match
At home, a claim can be made for All-Ireland quarter-final, Croke Park, August 15th. Dublin 1-14 Tyrone 1-14. A wonderful game of football, capped by Eoin Mulligan's goal - one of the best the new Croke Park has seen - and a last gasp equaliser by Dublin. But there's no doubt that the game of the year - one of the games of any year - was the Champions League Final in Istanbul. Playing AC Milan, Liverpool were 3-0 down at half-time but stormed back to 3-3 and won the penalty shoot-out. A million Scousers took to the streets to celebrate. None of which was of much use to the handful of Liverpool supporters who, in disgust, had left the ground at half-time.
The show
In September, Celtic Tiger opened in New York. The dance spectacular takes 2,000 years of Irish history and focuses it through Michael Flatley's unique artistic vision. His gleaming torso wards off redcoats, scantily-clad women run from torched cottages and emigration is represented by a sexually aroused air-hostess who strips to reveal a stars and stripes bikini. It's got dancing Vikings, Normans, gangsters, an Irish buachaill being blown up by a British tank and Flatley leading a rousing finale of Yankee Doodle-Dandy. European dates are planned next year. He will bring one of Irish culture's highest achievements back home this April.
The non-event
The 80,000 tickets for his Slane date sold out in two hours, but rapper Eminem star cancelled citing "exhaustion, complicated by other medical issues" - the "issues" turned out to be an addiction to sleeping pills. It was the first cancellation in Slane's 24-year concert history, and the Meath village enjoyed a quieter September than it might have expected when it heard it was to host the rapper's Anger Management tour. Henry Lord Mount Charles said Eminem would never be invited back. The touts were happy, though, when they got credit card refunds for tickets they had already sold on.
The company
In April, it was revealed that Salvacion Orge, a Filipina beautician working on for Irish Ferries on the MV Isle of Inishmore, was being paid €1 an hour. Irish Ferries blamed an outside recruitment company, which subsequently attempted to repatriate her. Orge refused to disembark but eventually went home with €25,000 compensation. It was a taste of things to come for Irish Ferries, which later announced plans to re-register its ships under a flag of convenience and to replace 543 staff with mostly eastern European workers earning less than the minimum wage. A lengthy stand-off and street protests followed when crew members refused to sail, or disembark, the ferries until a compromise was reached. In 2005, in terms of popularity Irish Ferries ranked somewhere behind Shell and National Toll Roads.
The acronym
PPARS officially stands for Personal, Payroll and Related Systems, but it's become a byword for rampant overspending. At an original budget of €9 million, the computerised payroll system was supposed to save millions for the Health Service Executive. By the time the project was suspended last October, PPARS was only partially working, had paid one staff member €1 million too much and, with its sister project, FISP (Financial Information Systems Project), had cost €150 million. If finished, it would cost €400 million. The story revealed the civil service's dependence on consultants, with Deloitte alone earning almost €40 million from work on the project. Across the country, the fiasco made a lot of people feel very sick indeed.
The scoop
Plenty of plaudits went the way of Prime Time when in May it broadcast its exposé of the care at the Leas Cross nursing home, but through it all the identity of the undercover healthcare worker who provided the hidden camera footage remained anonymous. Yet, his was perhaps the most effective reporting of the year. There had been plenty of reports highlighting the standard of care in nursing homes, but this was the first time most people had seen it at first hand and it sent shockwaves through the country. It also finally got the Government to act on a problem that most people suspect is not unique to Leas Cross. Nothing had the same impact this year.
The promise
The Government unveiled Transport 21 as the grand plan that would deliver a commuting paradise. Those promises included: a new Atlantic Corridor road route connecting Donegal, Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford; seven new Luas projects, including joining up the two lines years after not doing it when they should have; an underground metro line in Dublin; and St Stephen's Green becoming a transport hub. The whole thing will cost €9.4 million a day for the next 10 years. The grand plan was greeted with widespread cynicism, partly because of the lack of detail in the figures, but largely because of how tortuously expensive previous transport plans have been. It's called Transport 21, quipped comedian Ed Byrne, because that's how many years a "10-year plan" takes in this country.
The style
In the on-going debate over anti-social behaviour, hoodies became an icon of unruliness. Michael Noonan suggested that they be banned from shopping centres in the run-up to Christmas in an effort to cut down on shoplifting. In response, a Cork clothing company developed a range of hoodies featuring such slogans as "Blue Shirts Out, Blue Hoods In" and "Hood Wearers Vote FF". By then it had already featured in the debate over anti-social behaviour and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell's intention to introduce Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). Both here and in Britain, teenagers hiding their faces under a hooded top became the catch-all symbol for public disorder. A cartoon in Phoenix magazine suggested that, with a ban on hoodies, it could get very difficult for Santa to get into any houses this Christmas.
The sound
Ring-ding-ding-ding-brmmm-brmmm. Funny, for about five seconds Crazy Frog had been around for a few years, unleashed onto the world by a 17-year-old Swede trying to mimic a two-stroke moped engine. Another young Swede added animation that featured an, ahem, "generously proportioned" frog, before it was finally adapted into a ringtone, two hit singles and, somehow, an entire album. By the way, the animation was originally titled "That Annoying Thing". In fact, it is more like aural torture. You just know that in an interrogation cell somewhere in Iraq, they're playing this to unco-operative suspects.
The politician
There were plenty of contenders for politician of the year. A drunken Jim McDaid drove the wrong way down a dual carriageway. Willie O'Dea came over all Dirty Harry. Conor Lenihan referred to Turkish workers as "kebabs" and later fell asleep while awaiting a telephone interview on TV3. But Ivor Calley buried his career in only a week. Having gone through an alarming number of staff, the Minister of State at the Department of Transport offered his constituency secretary a car if he stayed. Then, after revelations of a free paint job on his house in the early 1990s, he went on RTÉ to say he hadn't quit - minutes before it was confirmed that he had. It overshadowed the Budget, caused a Dáil row, and made Bertie Ahern very grumpy.
The TV star
It's not as if the phrase "Rip-off Republic" wasn't already widely used, and it's not that we didn't know we weren't getting value for money, but Eddie Hobbs gave voice to the nation's favourite gripe. He became such a phenomenon that serious commentators wondered if he could be the downfall of the Government. When he asked viewers to send nappies to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, as a protest against the Groceries Order Bill, minister Micheál Martin received 2,500. The country loved Eddie Hobbs. Did it stop us spending? Did it hell. He complained about the cost of buying a car, but new car sales are expected to jump another 10 per cent in 2006. And we'll spend €22 million an hour in these last shopping hours before Christmas. Will his next series tackle the value we get from the television licence fee?
The statistics
In 2005 we learned that while 57 per cent of Irish people are overweight or obese, 84 per cent believe their own diet is about right or only needs to be "a little better"; While most people believe crime is rising, we're actually less scared of being victims of crime than we used to be. For some reason, four per cent of us reckon the Republic has more in common with France than with any other country, even though 79 per cent of us feel the Irish are less romantic than any other nationalities. Compared with other Europeans, the Irish have a below average interest in current affairs, and only 73 per cent of us still believe in God. And the rule of law is least respected by the highest educated. What percentage of our day is now spent answering survey questions still remains unknown.
The end
There were two funerals broadcast live on television this year, and both were for ex-footballers. More than a million people - some having queued for 12 hours - filed past the coffin of Pope John Paul II in April, and an estimated two million went to Rome for his funeral. He may have led a life somewhat less pious, but the reaction to the death of George Best in November was extraordinary. It wasn't exactly unexpected, and his obituary had been printed several times by media on 24-hour deathwatch, but in becoming the only person to have a funeral at Stormont other than Lord and Lady Craigavon it was tantamount to a state occasion. Was it the response of the middle-aged mourning the loss of their own youth? Or an outbreak of Princess Diana syndrome? Maybe, but it was a measure of Best's stature that his death united, rather than divided, the North for a week. Not even Northern Ireland's win over England in a World Cup qualifier managed that.