ME, TOMMY, THE COMMISSION AND THE GOLD PLATED DATA

Bob Curran (RIP)

Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) was established in 1975. So we were not long a member when we faced a major challenge.

The ERDF looked at the EEC as a series of regions rather than a collection of member states. The plan was to assist those regions which were lagging behind, as measured by a number of indicators such as GDP per head and rate of unemployment, and to help them catch up with the rest. This was a novel and major redistributive process within the EEC, the more so as funding increased over the years.

Before this could be done, comparable statistics for these indicators had to be compiled for each of the regions. This was a major task entrusted to the Commission. Just by the way, Ireland had been accepted as a single region at that stage, so the interest of the member state and the region coincided in this case.

A critical factor in the deliberations of the Commission, and the Council, would be the weighting given to each of the indicators in the compilation of a single overall index which would determine if a region was in line for regional funding.

Ireland had, therefore, a vital interest in ensuring the highest weighting for those indicators in which we were most disadvantaged compared with the other regions. This would be the best way to get the country included in the regional funding.

To do this we would need access to all of the indicators for each of the regions so that we could turn the weighting to our advantage. But the newly compiled Commission data had not been made available to the member states.

By some stroke or other, the Irish had managed to extract an informal promise from the Commission that we would be given a copy of the data as soon as the Commission had them to hand.

In the event, when this was not forthcoming, we began actively asking for it but there seemed to be a serious reluctance on the Commission's part to provide it. After much toing and froing, a senior Commission official was persuaded to give us the data but only if we came to Brussels for it.

Smelling a bit of a rat, we took some unusual precautions for the visit,

Obersturmführer Bob Curran dispatched Tommy Carroll and myself over to Brussels to get the data with strict instructions not to come back without it.

An appointment had been made for us to turn up at the Commission offices. Paddy Carty was the Department of Finances representative in the Irish Representation at the Council and he happily broke with protocol by accompanying us down to the Commission offices, where he had no business to be, and reading the riot act to the senior Commission official involved. We had been promised the figures and we had better be given them.

That was when the Commisssion played what they thought was their master stroke. They had the figures, but they could not copy them and hand them over as Commissioner Thompson had not yet seen them. We could, however, be shown them and we would be allowed to take notes.

Now, it was clear that a cursory glance over the figures with selected notetaking was no use to us. You can't run that sort of stuff through the computer at home. No doubt the Commission figured that we would have to settle for that and go away with what were effectively useless tokens.

They had not figured, however, on our anticipating such a move and coming prepared.

We readily agreed to the officer's offer and sat down at a table waiting for the files. The officer got the shock of his life when we pulled prepared templates out of our bags and started frantically copying down the actual figures.

During the morning session the official was becoming more and more uneasy with us sitting in his office, copying away and, of course, listening to all of his private phone conversations.

Come lunchtime the official expected to be saying goodbye to us but we explained that we were not yet finished and would be back straight after lunch to continue the work. The official's face blanched.

Anyway, back we came after lunch and were scribbling away when the official eventually asked us how much longer we thought we would be. His face blanched again when we said we would be there for as long as it took - tomorrow, the day after, the rest of the week if necessary.

This was a prospect that finally broke the camel's back and he very reluctantly handed over copies of the data so that we would not need to come back the next day.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

We accompanied the gold bullion back to Dublin the following day, marvelling at Bob Curran's foresight and Paddy Carty's healthy disregard for EEC protocol when it came to the national interest.