Phil Hogan’s double-bogey leaves him missing the cut in Brussels

You have to laugh. You really do. A week ago, Phil Hogan was one of the EU’s most powerful commissioners and a man of whom Ireland could justly be proud. He held the coveted trade portfolio, which meant that whatever is agreed, or not agreed, between Michel Barnier and Britain’s David Frost would have to receive his imprimatur before being passed to the Commission as a whole and the European Council.

Hogan was arrogant, imperious even. But that was okay, because he was also possessed of high intelligence, an insider’s knowledge of the European Project and – most important of all – a talent for getting things done.

And then along came Golfgate. A long-time member of the ultra-exclusive Oireachtas Golfing Society (OGS), Hogan decided that he could afford to accept his invitation to attend the society’s annual dinner and knees-up in Clifden, County Galway, next to the Atlantic, in sight of the Connemara mountains. Never mind that there was a pandemic raging. With great power came great irresponsibility.

The Oireachtas is like America’s Congress – a catch-all name for everyone involved in government, from the President and the Taoiseach down, via the elected members of Dáil Éireann, to the lowliest nominated senator. In a parliamentary sense, it is obviously important, but probably rather less so that its eponymous golfing society, which also embraces judges, business leaders and top civil servants.

It could reasonably be said that the OGS comprises a Who’s Who of Ireland’s Great and Good, even if Gerry Adams is not a member (the former IRA commander had little time for golf when growing up in Belfast). The society’s President is Donnie Cassidy, a former TD (MP) who in his younger days, before going into show-business management, played saxophone in the showband Firehouse, whose lead singer, Jim Tobin, known as Gentleman Jim, died last year to the dismay of his many fans..

Anyway … Hogan was a regular at the annual dinner and wasn’t going to miss the opportunity last Friday night to swank about at Clifden’s Station House Hotel, the venue for one of the key events of this year’s social calendar.

The problem was that Belgium was not on the Green List, the countries from which citizens or visitors can enter Ireland without having to go into self-isolation for 14 days. Belgium is one of the territories most affected by Covid-19, and the Commissioner was required to go from Dublin airport straight to his luxury home in County Kildare and remain there, in quarantine, for two weeks.

Yes, but hang on! Wouldn’t that mean missing the dinner? The hell with that! And it wasn’t as if the dinner was the only item on his agenda. He had things to do and people to see in Dublin, Limerick, Kilkenny and Galway. He was a busy man who didn’t often get the chance to catch up with old friends. I mean, cut him a little slack. From hubris to nemesis was but a step. Hogan decided that as he had been tested for Covid just days before setting out from Brussels, he could damn well do as he pleased.

As the Irish Times put it in its leader this morning, the Commissioner believed that a negative test for coronavirus gave him an “access-all-areas pass” to travel round Ireland as he wished. “It did not.”

And now he has gone. He is finished. Though he said “sorry” several times, it turned out that sorry wasn’t the hardest word after all. It was “resign” after “I” that was the most difficult. But in the end, he bowed to the inevitable. His career as one of the most highly-placed, highly-regarded, and most feared, European Commissioners is over. If he attends next year’s OGS gathering, it may have to be as one of the waiters.

It should be noted here that Hogan was far from the only one to ignore the rules. A total of 81 members of the society turned up at last Friday’s slap-up tea, including the Agriculture minister, Dara Calleary, who soon after resigned, and a newly-appointed member of the Supreme Court, Séamus Woulfe, a fomer attorney-general, who is understood to be considering his position.

What Dominic Cummings must make of the affair can only be guessed at. He would have to have been blind, which he isn’t, not to see the similarities.

But Ireland’s loss is Europe’s opportunity. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, was sorry to lose the Irish bruiser, on whom she relied to take charge of a vital aspect of EU business, leaving her to concentrate on the reponse to Covid and the upcoming economic recession across the 27. But, with No deal with the UK a real possibility, and with the need uppermost to show that there could be no compromise with ill-judged behaviour by even her most valued colleagues, it was a time to act, not to grieve.

And so the search is on for a replacement. It is up to Ireland to nominate a successor to Hogan, though whether or not he – or she – gets to keep the trade portfolio is another matter. There may have to be a reshuffle at the Berlaymont, with the Irish commissioner demoted or moved aside.

Michéal Martin, the newly-established Taoiseach (prime minister), leads a coalition government, made up of the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael parties, plus the Greens, alongside his predecessor Leo Varadkar. The two do not, as they say in Ireland, get on famously. The coalition deal, tortuously negotiated over more than four months, is that Martin remains in the top job for two-and-a-half years before being replaced by Varadkar in advance of the next general election.

Fine Gael, which supported the 1921 independence settlement, believes that it has a right to the Brussels job, since Hogan is Fine Gael and it’s still their turn. Fianna Fail, which opposed partititon but is otherwise indistinguishable from its rival, would like to sneak its own nominee into the role, but is wary of upsetting the domestic applecart.

One obvious candidate is Varadkar himself, who is well known and admired in Brussels. Another is the past and current foreign minister Simon Coveney – ditto. But though both men would love to sit at Von der Leyen’s top table, they know that they would have little more than three years in the job before being replaced by a Fianna Fail trusty. Vardakar is only 41. What would he do after being forced to step down? He could, I suppose, be appointed the EU ambassador to the United States, as was one of his predecessors as Taoiseach, John Bruton. Or he might hope to join Goldman Sachs. Who knows? But it would be a gamble, as it would be for Coveney, so the plum may have to go to someone else entirely – maybe a Green, but more likely that familiar standby, a safe pair of hands.

Von der Leyen wants the issue resolved quickly and has told Martin that she expects to be offered the choice between a man and a woman. So watch this space.

In the meantime, Phil Hogan, at the age of 60, will be heading back to Brussels to clear his desk and sort out his flat. My guess is, he will sneak into the Commission after dusk, hoping to avoid both his former colleagues and the pursuing press core. But again, who knows? Maybe he will decide to go out with a bang.

Observers of the Irish drama will be painfully aware of the fact that in these woke times the way in which we respond to Covid-19 is the closest thing to religious observance. As the Cummings affair demonstrated, when those at the top try to get away with ignoring the rules, those of us further down expect to get our pound of flesh. Hogan was a formidable commissioner, but in the end he was no hero.

I leave the last word to the Irish Times.

“The mood of vengeance is never pleasant, and bloodlust must be avoided. But the overwhelming priority is to reassure citizens that the harsh restrictions that must be imposed on their lives are fair, just and equally applicable to all of us. There has always been a very good pragmatic case for keeping Hogan in place as EU trade commissioner at such a crucial time for Ireland. Yet public health is a pragmatic question too, and in this emergency, it trumps all the others.

“When anger is well-founded, the only way to get rid of it is to address its causes. The cause here is behaviour whose offensiveness Hogan never seemed to grasp.”