It has been a very bad time for the image of Tullamore, and people living in the Co Offaly capital are not happy with the bad press it has been getting.
First, it effectively lost its minister for health, Mr Cowen, whose elevation to Minister for Foreign Affairs has more or less exiled him to a life anywhere but Tullamore.
But it was one of his last acts as minister which caused the most negative publicity. He relocated the National Disease Surveillance Centre from Dublin to Tullamore.
Unfortunately, there was no consultation with the staff, and a number of specialists who give their services voluntarily to the unit questioned the logic of locating there.
One of them implied on national radio that because Tullamore was so remote and hard to get to, it was lunacy to locate the centre there.
While the new Minister for Health, Mr Martin, has refused to reverse the Cowen decision, there are likely to be talks between the staff, the medical personnel and Department of Health officials to attempt to resolve the situation.
In face of the criticisms, the local Chamber of Commerce issued a statement saying the critics knew nothing about it.
Mr Donal Hackett, president of the chamber, said his response to suggestions that relocating to Tullamore was a backward step was to invite people to visit the town and talk to civil servants who have already relocated there.
"Social and leisure facilities in Tullamore are second to none. We have top-class hotels, each with a leisure centre incorporating swimming pool, gymnasium and other facilities," he said.
"There are two golf clubs and very active sporting organisations.
"There are many more social and cultural organisations. The town is very central and is only slightly more than an hour from Dublin," he said.
"I know several families who have already relocated to Tullamore as part of the decentralisation of other Government Departments. They are very happy to live in Tullamore, to raise and educate their children here.
"Tullamore is a nice place to live and to work," his statement concluded.
However, just when things were beginning to settle down, last weekend a journalist, Mary Kenny, put the spotlight on Tullamore again in the magazine of a national newspaper when she reported a conversation she had had in London with a former resident of the town.
The man, who told her he was mentally unwell, said there were hundreds of thousands of people like himself driven out of Ireland by discrimination and bigotry, particularly from Tullamore.
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