Even the most hardened cynics in the press corps, the narrow-eyed men with ash snowing down on their dirty trench coats from the cigarettes that dangled on their mean, cracked lips, could not withhold a cheer, writes Fintan O'Toole.
They laid down their notebooks with trembling hands and rose unsteadily to their calloused feet.
The raucous roar carried on their whiskey breath hit Monica like a wave stroking the beach in Marbella. She could see that brute from the Star furtively brush a little tear from his bloodshot eyes and the hard-faced young wan from the Times gaze at Martin in silent awe. In her mind's eye she could picture the next day's headlines: "Cullen's So Spatial"; "Martin the Magnificent Plans Our Future"; "Minister's Spatial Strategy Meets With Spontaneous Acclaim".
She stole a brief glance at the Minister and as his eyes met hers he bowed his head for a second in humble acknowledgment of her genius. From behind his beautifully trimmed beard, his lips mouthed a silent "Thank you."
Afterwards, as the Taoiseach embraced Martin Cullen and whispered something about retiring in the knowledge that the country would be in good hands, Monica melted into the background and basked in the glow of quiet satisfaction. Her mind drifted back five months to July 2002, and that terrible, tearful phone call from Martin. It was a good five minutes before she could even grasp what he was saying amid the desolate wails and heart-rending sobs. Gradually she was able to pick out a few scattered phrases: "Spatial strategy", "launch in November", "looming disaster". It took her half an hour to get him calm enough to make sense.
Yes, the work on the Spatial Strategy had been going on for the best part of three years. Yes, Martin had a fully staffed press office. Yes, a PR company, Drury Communications, had already been paid over €200,000 for work on publicising the strategy. But still he woke every night lathered in sweat, nightmarish visions of maps with Waterford missing and Letterkenny where Longford should be, hovering before him in the dark. How could he ever explain to those dolts from the media that Ireland had lots of different towns? How could he get them to realise that the Irish Spatial Strategy wasn't about sending Pat Rabbitte to the moon?
She could hear shuffling noises on the other end of the phone and he told her that he was getting down on his knees. And then the begging began. Even as he said the words "€1,200 a day" he broke out again in a paroxysm of blubbing and bawling, his sobs rolling onwards like wave after wave rushing on to the beach at St Tropez. He was so embarrassed to offer such a pittance, but he knew the fierce sense of patriotism that stirred in her heart and her endless capacity for self-sacrifice.
She whispered that she would do it for Ireland and he began to wail again, moved now to tears of relief and joy, of gratitude and admiration.
Monica already had a lot on her plate. She was president of the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland, and she had to oversee a CCI statement warning about public service pay and how "It is imperative that the Government is committing to ensure that every penny paid out is wholly conditional on the introduction of sweeping changes in the public sector". But she set to with a will.
Soon, her flashes of creative genius were illuminating the political firmament. One press statement issued in Martin's name in October 2002 was acknowledged as a masterpiece of literary invention: "Reaction to the electronic voting experience has been overwhelmingly positive both from voters and from electoral administrators and I will be pressing ahead immediately with the planning for the 2004 polls." It had a ring of truth that sounded through the land like a rallying cry for a nation's future.
Yet even though she kept up a brave front so that Martin would be able to hold himself together, she too knew the cold, hard grip of fear. Launching the spatial strategy was a task so daunting that at times she wanted to crawl away and hide. But she soldiered on. She stayed up night after night reading the speeches of the great orators: Pericles, Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King. And then in a fever, the night before the launch, the phrases came to her like angels in a vision. She scribbled them down and fell back to sleep, exhausted. In the morning, there they were by her bedside: "The word 'spatial' sounds abstract but relates to something very familiar - the area or space around us"; "balanced regional development will only be achieved if we get more economic activity in the regions"; "the strategy seeks to organise and co-ordinate these roles in a complementary, win-win way".
It was that subtle and mellifluous alliteration - "win-win way" - that had brought the hacks to their feet. At that moment, she knew she had triumphed and that Martin's strategy would be so successful that within a year the Government would announce a decentralisation programme that completely ignored it. It was almost enough to make her cry.