Haughey was right: the art in Government Buildings is terrible

Puzzled once again by the doings of Government this week, it occurred to Overheard that bad art could be to blame. Last year’s State papers from the National Archives revealed that Charles Haughey, the only taoiseach you’d conceivably allow to discuss high culture at a salon, was annoyed about the quality of the paintings during his 1991 refurb of Government Buildings.

“Of the portraits hanging on the wall of the chamber itself, the Taoiseach has reservations about those of Pearse and Tone, in terms of the quality of the work,” one of Haughey’s assistants wrote to architect Klaus Unger, referring to the room where Cabinet considers diesel subsidies and other matters of state.

“Would it be possible to have these ‘re-executed’ (the portraits, of course) by other artists?”

Overheard, in the clever guise of an ordinary citizen interested in architecture, finally had the opportunity to check what Haughey was talking about during a tour of the Department of the Taoiseach as part of the recent Open House weekend.

There is much to admire around the building, from the Evie Hone stained glass window on the staircase to hallways lined with borrowed classics from the Office of Public Works. And the current set of choices – Michael Collins in a Fianna Fáil taoiseach’s office, can you believe it? – tells a story about where we are as a nation.

Pearse and Tone were apparently not re-executed, however, and the Cabinet still sits in the Council Chamber surrounded by the types of portraits you probably wouldn’t hang in your house unless you’d done them yourself in pencil for an art class.

Parnell looks broadly like the combination of actual human and patriotic statesman that you’d hope for in the setting, but many of the other parents of the nation that look down on the powers-that-be do not. Overheard got no fresh photographic evidence, as taking pictures is banned on the tour.

[ Haughey not happy with quality of Pearse and Wolfe Tone portraits in Government BuildingsOpens in new window ]

The numerous black-and-white sketch portraits seem conspicuously weak compared to the grandeur of, for example, the royals and nobles of the Great Hall in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, or even the city fathers in Dublin City Council’s chamber.

How is a Minister to concentrate with that sort of thing looking down on them? It took 12 years after his resignation to work up a portrait of Brian Cowen to hang beside his predecessors in the corridor, which doesn’t bode well for the idea of commissioning a new set of paintings.

But they could always simply take them down. Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all, as Oscar Wilde once said.

Christmas wars resume

Look to Limerick for the opposite of the first World War’s Christmas truce: the now-annual battle over festivities has resumed. Long-time readers will recall a decision last year to “cancel Christmas”, or refuse permission for a municipal street market, on the basis that it didn’t seem likely to be any good. Mayor John Moran pledged to return with a more suitable offering in 2026, and he has.

From November 21st, a Christmas fayre will take place in the city’s Georgian core, not tucked away from the fray in a side square but on The Crescent, in the middle of O’Connell Avenue, shutting it off to traffic for more than a month.

“I personally don’t believe that if we had chosen the space in front of St Mary’s Cathedral or beside our offices that it would have been a national Christmas,” Moran told Limerick Live 95, introducing the concept of “national Christmas” to the world.

Councillors, unmoved by the vision, complained that footfall could be affected for non-fayre retailers, and online, a torrent of threats and abuse ensured. Moran even intimated that he was being subjected to mayor-based discrimination, another conceptual first.

[ Limerick’s mayor complains about ‘unreasonable’ working hours amid lack of resourcesOpens in new window ]

“Of course, we can have legitimate debate, but that’s no call for calling somebody out about their physical appearance, their sexual preference, or even just the fact that they are the mayor,” he said.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

From New York to Cork

Americans in Ireland: are there too many or not enough? Overheard is neutral but others have strong feelings. Among them is University College Cork (UCC), which is seeking to engage recruitment specialists to sail across the ocean blue and bring back more students.

Pitching study abroad can be tough. First there’s the task of diverting students from Trinity College Dublin, which appears early and often in the work of Sally Rooney. But UCC does have things to recommend it: its neo-Gothic quad has a corridor containing the largest collection of Ogham stones on display anywhere in the world, apparently.

Making that case will be a new squad of recruiters “supporting the next phase of growth in North America”. The standard is simple: shake hands, post online and do what you need to do to get more applicants. Non-EU students are lucrative, but theoretically gettable: an arts degree at UCC will run them €22,000 in fees, which is much more than Irish students pay, but less than an American might pay in some institutions at home.

If they do flock to the old world, it could be difficult to find somewhere to put them, with 6,732 applicants for about 1,500 official college beds at UCC last year.

Martyrs and mystics

If Ogham is a little too pagan for your tastes, make for Kilkenny. That impeccably Norman city will host a “rare public veneration” on Sunday of “more than 3,000 first-class relics”.

It’s the Feast of All Saints, when any ghouls that might have snuck through the thinned veil during Samhain are sent unceremoniously packing.

At St Canice’s parish, the faithful and faithful-curious are invited to contemplate the relics of “martyrs, mystics and canonised saints” during and after 11.30am Mass. First-class relics consist of physical remains of saints, such as bone, hair or flesh, rather than simply remnants of clothing or prayer books used by saintly figures.

High-profile relics in Ireland come from both the extremely healthy roster of native saints (the Martyrology of Donegal lists 1,000 up to the 17th century) and imported saints from abroad. St Valentine, for example, was born, lived and died in or around Rome before having his relics granted to a Carmelite by Pope Gregory XVI almost 1,600 years later and winding up on Dublin’s Aungier Street.

Kilkenny hosts both domestic and exotic, from the likes of Oliver Plunkett and Edmund Rice to Saints Cosmas and Damian, Arab doctors martyred in what is now Turkey a mere decade or so before the Roman empire had a change of heart about the whole Christianity thing.

Not a bad spread of potential intercessors, if you’re in the market.