Joe Jacob vs Marian Finucane

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

It was autumn 2001, best forgotten; the Irish government, in a fit of bureaucratic ecstasy, Irish politicians decided to give its “National Emergency Plan” a good frisking. America invoked Article 5. Britain dusted off maps of places it once had colonised. And in Ireland, we decided to hold a meeting about being “prepared” and all that. This prompted the usual gang of radio inquisitors to start calling departments, asking cheerful questions like, “If a cloud of nerve gas settled over O’Connell Street, would we die before or after we finished our pints?”

Answers were, as they say in diplomatic circles, “not forthcoming.” This is because the entire Irish civil service operates on a single, inviolable principle: Never be the smart fellow holding the parcel when the public relations bomb goes off.

Eventually, someone fed Fianna Fáil’s Joe Jacob, the Minister of State with responsibility for Nuclear stuff, on to the Marian Finucane Show, an RTE radio program where the genteel Marian would peel the skin from politicians with the tender concern of a chef preparing an eel. (Ireland doesn’t have a nuclear power plant or nuclear energy, so no one was quite sure who would be in charge if a nuclear disaster happened). Turns out the Fianna Fáil TD from Wicklow was the man.

Jacob began well enough, praising the Emergency Plan in the kind of language that would make a parliament sub-committee weep with joy, all about “mechanisms” and “coordination” and other words that mean “a large committee will be formed to draft a memo about forming a task force.”

But Marian, a woman who could find a flaw in the Sermon on the Mount, began to probe. What about a chemical attack? What happens? A biological incident? What would we do NOW? A nuclear incident in the UK? It was excruciating. Anyone listening would have felt almost sorry for Joe Jacob. Almost.

Poor Joe had no specifics. He had only the politician’s rosary: “Mechanisms are in place.” “A public awareness campaign would be triggered.” To which Finucane, with the serenity of a sniper, replied: “Does the public not need to be aware of what to do before an attack happens?” It was at this point a nation paused, put down its cup of tea, and said, “She’s got him.”

Sensing the tide was against him, Jacob performed a tactical pivot worthy of a Soviet ballet dancer, swinging the conversation to the nuclear threat from Sellafield. He urged calm, warning against alarmistic vibrations, which I believe is a condition suffered by badly-tuned guitars and people who play them.

Marian, perhaps taking pity on the hapless Joe, followed him into this fresh hell. “If I heard… that something had crashed into Sellafield… what would we do now?”

What followed was a masterpiece of attempted failed political evasion, a symphony of nothingness. Joe referenced “the plan,” the “new plan,” the “updated plan,” the “state-of-the-art plan,” and finally the “draft plan” to be issued “in weeks.” He might as well have been reciting the ingredients from a shampoo bottle. “Yeah, but what would we do now?” Marian asked, a mantra that was becoming the national prayer.

Undaunted, Jacob produced the holy relic of his nuclear ministry: The Fact Sheet. It would, he promised, be distributed to every home in Ireland. It would contain everything. What to do, where to go, how to live. It was like the Ten Commandments, but with more talk of iodine and shelters. And yet, when asked by Finucane what to do now, at this very moment, in the event the nuclear power plant at Sellafield had suddenly turned into a glowing nuclear puddle, Jacob replied with the kind of bureaucratic paradox that could only come from a man who’s forgotten both the question and the country he’s speaking to: “We would tell people.”

Pressed, again, heroically, by Finucane (“Tell them what?!”), Jacob declared, “Sheltering! We would shelter!” and triumphantly added, “There are iodine tablets!” To which the nation collectively wondered whether he meant we have them or we will one day have them, hypothetically, upon the issuance of the blessed fact sheet.

Naturally, the government had to send in the clean-up crew. Enter Micheál Martin (current prime minister), then Minister for Health at the time, whose solemn, measured tones could convince you that a plague of locusts was part of a sensible agricultural policy. He assured the nation that iodine tablets were stocked in all health board areas. This was a lie. Many boards had none. Many had tablets so old they’d expired around the time Ulysses was published. The civil service had, once again, handed its minister a shovel and pointed him at a minefield.

Opposition TDs screamed for Joe Jacobs’ head. Political Wags renamed him the “Minister for Disaster.” But in the end, the old tribal machinery ground on. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who had never heard of Joe Jacob up till now, with a straight face, declared that Joe Jacob knew “more about Sellafield and nuclear than anybody else in Government. which, depending on the yardstick, may not have been much of a commendation.

The iodine tablets eventually arrived, five months late. By the time they expired, the Department of Health had decided the whole thing was pointless anyway. A fitting epitaph for a lot of government initiatives implemented by civil servants without the requisite skill sets. Like a broken cannon, elements of the civil service are like a broken cannon; they don’t work, and you can’t fire them.

The political lesson is obvious. Never go on the radio or do any media without your facts. And if you must, for God’s sake, don’t talk about a fact sheet you haven’t read. It makes you look not just incompetent, but like a taunting, bureaucratic goblin. And the public hates taunting, bureaucratic goblins almost as much as they fear nuclear fallout.

Bonus audio of the encounter.