TV Comment – Some scandals are best left

OF LATE, due to an increasing tendency to turn the looking glass on distressing material from the very recent past, I've come to dislike the long-running RTE documentary series Scannal! Oblivious to the likelihood of reopening barely healed wounds, the series sometimes recalls the most dreadful of recent tragedies, as a few weeks back when it aired the documentary Monagear, and for no good reason. This was the shocking 2007 murder/suicide in the Wexford village of that name when the bodies of all four members of a family, the parents and their two young daughters, where discovered in the family home. As the euphemism goes, the Gardaí were not looking for anyone else but what benefit is it now to anyone to bring it all back a mere four years later. Is Scannal! a scandal? Happily, Monday evening's documentary had the merit of being from the Ireland of 60 years ago and, while it caused turmoil of a political nature in its day, all it could have managed this week was the a mild wondering if there could ever have been such an Ireland. It wasn't exactly a Camelot, but there was, and the fondly remembered Dr Noël Browne was its Minister for Health. Full of reforming zeal, he proposed his ill-fated Mother and Child Scheme which set out to provide free medical care for all mothers and their children up to the age of 16, regardless of income. Browne was riding high on his success in setting up a strategy which would eventually rid Ireland of the scourge of TB and how could anyone stand in his way now. But his opponents were legion, and as RTE's Political Correspondent David McCullough who contributed to the documentary remarked, all political careers end in failure and Browne's was no exception. McCullough was on hand because of his recently published book The Reluctant Taoiseach which is said to be a fresh and revealing look at John A Costello who led the first-ever Irish coalition government and of which Noël Browne was a minister. On a local note, Dunmore's Michael Donnellan served as Parliamentary Secretary â€â€ Minister of State today â€â€ to Minister for Finance Patrick McGilligan with responsibility for the Office of Public Works and, wearing that hat, Donnellan drained the Corrib and was said to have ferried his neighbours to Sunday Mass in his 'Half-Car'. The then all-powerful Catholic hierarchy led by Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid joined with the medical profession to mount a vicious campaign against the Mother and Child Scheme and, a man before his time, Browne took particular exception to the idea that an archbishop could tell an elected government what to do. John Charles, as he was always known behind his back, believed it was the exclusive right of all parents to provide healthcare for their child and the State could have nothing to do with it. He sent a message to Costello that he wished Browne to call to see him and while Browne fretted and fumed he was advised to go and see the archbishop. That meeting must have gone very wrong for Browne and repeated on the documentary was the frequent claim that he stormed out from the presence of the Archbishop, banging the door behind him. The medical profession were against Browne because they feared his 'socialised medicine' would result in a loss of income, nor had he the support of his Cabinet colleagues. Apart from his controversial proposal the worry in financial circles was that the State couldn't afford such a far-reaching measure and, being difficult to work with, Browne had fallen out with most of his Cabinet colleagues. In 1951 relations had become so strained within his own Clann na Poblachta party that the leader, Sean McBride, asked him to quit as Minister for Health and Taoiseach Costello was very relieved to accept Browne's subsequent offer of resignation. Browne then released all the correspondence to the newspapers and the country was astonished to read of the machinations behind closed doors. The resulting public outcry gave great annoyance to the Cabinet, to McQuaid and even to Dev, then Opposition leader. Matters of this nature should be kept quiet and settled discreetly, said Dev, but Browne who had lost the battle when the government fell in 1951 was seen to have won the war. Other contributions came from Michael D Higgins and Senator David Norris and I could see little merit in what they had to offer other than, as potential candidates in the election of the next President of Ireland, they were availing of any opportunity to harness the oxygen of publicity. â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ HAVING occasionally looked in on his interviews in previous seasons I had been impressed by the increasingly popular Piers Morgan and was looking forward to his chat with music legend Andrew Lloyd Webber on UTV last Saturday night. But was I disappointed! He gave Morgan the runaround and to such an extent that I knew as little of the real Lloyd Webber at the finish as I did at the outset, which was nothing. Morgan is English but as at least one of his grandparents came from Ireland, were he a footballer, he would be eligible for a place on an Irish team. He supports Arsenal but I never heard of him as much of a footballer and I now know from his performance on Saturday night that he's not much on the interview circuit either. That's unfortunate as everything about his Saturday night show reeked of money. He had travelled to the Mediterranean to meet Lloyd Webber and was discovered in the opening scene making his way up a steeply sloping driveway in Majorca to the musician's mansion. Pausing now and again to admire the magnificent sea views, he talked of how he was looking forward to meeting his close friend who then came into shot waiting for him at the top. How Morgan from his relatively modest background could be palsy-walsy with one of the world's super-rich was another of the little queries I didn't get an answer to in an interview which was conducted mostly with Lloyd Webber seated at a grand piano on which he tinkled as the humour took him and with Morgan hovering above him, glass with ridiculously-priced drink in hand. In that position they blathered on about Lloyd being the greatest composer in history â€â€ which is pushing the boat out a bit, I would have thought â€â€ and how some of his musicals have run for years in London and New York. That I could accept and I thought Morgan might get around to asking how much he is worth. He didn't but I've seen it written somewhere that his fortune is as close as makes no difference to the digit one followed by ten zeros. To help get a handle on that, a million is as described above but with a mere six trailing zeros, so get the calculator and off you go. With two failed marriages behind him he is now again very happily in harness and his wife came in and out occasionally to establish her presence. She wasn't dusting or bringing in cups of tea or anything, she's too rich, but she was by his side, that's the main thing. And he needs her because a few years ago he came down with prostate cancer, requiring him to undergo a number of severe operations before he was pronounced cancer-free. I'd like to have seen our own Gaybo talking to Lloyd Webber and maybe we will now that Gay have been signed up by RTE for a Summer Friday night chat show. That's how he started out almost 50 years ago during the holiday season when as a very young man he was handed the chance of a lifetime and told to run with it. Only now he is denying some other young man a similar chance and that doesn't seem right. What do you think?