PHELIM MOLLOY

Phelim's long time colleague and friend in the Department of Finance, Stephen O'Neill, summed him up in his condolence message on RIP.ie

Phelim was a wonderful friend and colleague. He will be remembered with affection by all who knew him in the Department of Finance.

I didn't know Phelim well, hardly at all in fact, in my own years in the Department of Finance, that is until he was nominated to the Board of Directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London.

I had been involved in the negotiations setting up the bank in 1990/91 and then served a year on the Board as Irish Alternate Director.

I was resident in Dublin with the day job and travelled to London for Board meetings. This was a most unsatisfactory situation and my Danish Director was not getting the support he needed or deserved. There was a need to appoint a resident Alternate in London, and Phelim got the job.

So he became my successor, residing in London for the next two years, and I was his desk officer in Dublin.

As a desk officer you learn a lot about the abilities and character of those you are looking after and I've experienced the whole spectrum.

From my point of view, Phelim was ideal. We worked as a team and he well understood both the Department of Finance and the Irish national interest. We never had a bit of trouble this end and Phelim was both trusted and respected by the Board. He worked well with the Director of our constituency, Lars Tybjerg, and between them they built up a lot of political capital on the Board.

When Phelim returned to the Department he became my boss, and a better boss you could not ask for. He did not interfere but was always there with good solid advice when you had a problem. And above all, he was very fair.

I was saddened today to hear of his death and will always cherish his memory.

May he rest in peace.

Phelim's death notice on RIP.ie

There was a beautiful funeral mass/ceremony this morning (30/12/22) in Booterstown church. The music was perfectly chosen and performed. Phelim's daughter, Deirdre, gave a wonderful and balanced eulogy.

The recording is likely to be available here for about the next month at least; the eulogy is at 1hour,3minutes,30seconds in.

Trusting Technology

Comptometer - click image for larger size
Source: Comptometer Model WM by Ezrdr - Own work.
Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

When I was growing up, technology was virtually all mechanical, or at best, electro-mechanical. We had those telephone switchboards with all the jackplugs and the little white balls. Things like washing machines were a bit of a miracle and it was rumoured that some people constantly watched them in action, just like the TV today. Radio valves, which admittedly were electronic, started giving way to transistors, and great big calculating machines, called comptometers, started giving way to electronic calculators.

In the office, when important documents were being typed up, on manual typewriters, they were accompanied by carbon copies, produced by inserting a sheet of carbon paper behind the original and a sheet of plain paper behind that again. Additional copies could be produced simultaneously by repeating this procedure provided both the typewriter and the typist, always female, were fit for purpose.

So, the advent of the photocopying machine was traumatic. We progressed from wet ones where the image was developed like a photograph, to dry ones which used powdered ink. And then they started getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster, and before we knew it, we were drowning in copies.

Well, that's the background. Now, here are the stories.

There was a rumour in the office that one very senior officer, hyper intelligent but not very tech savvy, used to always check the copies against the originals. This story was probably apocryphal as it was subsequently told about other members of staff. Nevertheless it was a very funny story in its day and allowed some of us to harmlessly vent our spleen about our, in our estimation, less intelligent bosses.

Much to my surprise, I have now come across a piece of research which appears to vindicate them and make a fool out of me. Apparently, Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents.

Wow.

If this short statement doesn't satisfy you, check out the research. I have Donal to thank for pointing me at this.

My second story is of a different order. I was once at a very high level and confidential meeting in my work. One of the participants produced a top secret one page document which he offered to share with my boss. The boss asked me where was the photocopying machine, as he was not in his own building. I offered to copy the document for him but he wouldn't hear of it. So I brought him to the massive IBM photocopier in the basement. Again he refused my offer to handle the mechanics of it.

"What do I do now?" he asked.

"Well", said I, "do you see that cover there. Lift it up and put the document face down on the glass plate under it."

This he did, all the while shielding me from any sight of his precious paper.

"And then what?"

"How many copies do you want?"

"Just the one"

"OK, just press the green button and wait"

"And what happens now"

"Well", said I, trying desperately to hide a smile, "it comes out down there at the other end"

He suddenly leaped the length of the long machine to grab the paper coming out the other end before the imaginary enemy could seize it and whisk it away.

Somewhere in mid-leap it struck him that he was now leaving the original unattended, and it was truly a miracle he did not break in two as he then tried to cover both ends of the massive machine at once.

Schadenfreude.

ASPER

There are always new Government Departments coming on stream these days. This is the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It has been split off from the original Department of Finance for a variety of practical, political and personal reasons which it is not necessary to go into here.

My immediate interest here is the logo. Clearly a new logo was required. In recent times, Government Departments and some State bodies have tried to use variations on the harp. I suppose you could say that this retains a sense of consistency across Government but there are clearly limits to the number of variations you can come up with before the thing becomes unrecognisable. Or should I just say limits to the imagination.

Anyway that unstable looking thing above is, I assume, a variation on the harp, though Brian Boru might not quite know what to do with it should he encounter it on a dark night.

That thought provoked me into wondering what else it might be if it was let out on its own, and my thoughts are below. Additional thoughts are welcome. My imagination is limited, or my mind boggled, or I'm just too plain tired to carry on any further.


Before I leave you, I should explain that the new Department likes to be popularly (if that is the appropriate adverb) known as PER and its blog is As PER and ASPER in Latin is rough or harsh, so I'll leave you to mull over that one.

ReactionsA former colleague with a deep understanding of the national psyche and of the present cataclysm suggests:

Two redundant motorway junctions plus ten intermediate entrances to ghost estates.

Living History

Is it a sign of advancing age when I find myself with connections to three out of four people photographed at the launch of the history of National Library of Ireland Society? This is a recurring experience.

I worked with Felix in the Departments of Finance and Economic Planning and Development and our paths have recently begun crossing again in the areas of local and family history. I also worked with Ian in both the above Departments though our paths have not (yet) started criscrossing in recent times.

Maurice is a different kettle of fish. I first met him at an essay competition run by the Irish Independent and moderated by the then editor Hector Legge. He won, I lost. He then turned up as my tutor in UCD and duly signed my chit to get Paul Blanshard's book The Irish and Catholic Power off the reserved shelf where is was isolated lest it contaminate the innocent students of the day. Thank you Maurice. I reread the book in more recent times and it is even much better than I remember.

For the record, the guys are (L-R) Felix M Larkin, Vice President of the Society, Maurice Manning who launched the history, Dónall Ó Luanaigh who wrote it, and Ian d'Alton, Treasurer.

Reviews of Friends of the National Library: in Irish Times Irish Catholic