An invitation to the opening night of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui was on offer, but it was the irresistible rise of Declan Ganley and his Libertas movement that drew me and a few dozen others to the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin on Tuesday. The Galway-based businessman was hosting a dinner for Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president.

Not since Sidney Poitier was brought home to meet Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner has an evening meal prompted such controversy. Lisbon Treaty cheerleaders in the media whipped themselves into a frenzy over the prospect of a visiting head of state attending a private function hosted by an individual who, like the majority of Irish voters in last June’s referendum, opposed the government.

The Lisbonistas need to chill. Contrary to the impression readers may have received from a “news” report in the Irish Times, there was not a right-wing rally taking place in the bowels of the Shelbourne. I can confirm that the evening did not begin with a choir of schoolchildren singing a rousing chorus of Tomorrow Belongs to Me, the Nazi anthem from Cabaret. Guests were not required to wear armbands and nobody stood to attention or delivered a straight-arm salute when the host made his entrance.

I did see somebody wearing a brown shirt but he turned out to be an academic and, as everybody knows, they have no dress sense. Blond hair was also in short supply (well, natural blond, anyway).

Instead, the guests enjoyed a few drinks, nice food, impressive set dancing and two speeches. Ganley gave it to Lisbon with both barrels. No surprise there: he did this in public on a number of occasions during the Lisbon referendum, so repeating his concerns at a private dinner hardly amounts to a story, much less a conspiracy.

Then a very amusing Klaus did his Eurosceptic thing, referred to the “great” French president in a voice dripping with sarcasm and admitted he hadn’t yet made up his mind how to play the Czech Republic’s six-month presidency of the European Union, which begins in January. He may be “active” or he may he spend the time on holidays in Patagonia. Our money’s on the former. After that we all went home and the world, as far as I could tell, was still spinning on its axis.

This was a classic case of a storm in a teacup (or sturm im wasserglas as we say in private company). Ganley’s opponents are so offended by his every utterance that they can’t resist going over the top. Inevitably, they end up playing the media game on his terms.

With RTE and the Irish Times clocking up serious man hours covering his activities, is it any wonder that the Libertas chief doesn’t feel the need to surround himself with an expensive publicity machine? His enemies do all his work for him.

Better still, Ganley’s coup managed to upstage the circus taking place down the road in the Dail where a sub-committee looking into Ireland’s future in the EU (known round these parts as the Oireachtas Committee on Un-European Activities) has been throwing soft-ball questions at a parade of “witnesses”, many of whom seem to be convinced that Irish voters were really quitting the EU when they rejected the Lisbon Treaty in June.

Business figures have been asked to detail how our investment base has been decimated by the Lisbon decision but, so far, they have failed to provide a single concrete example of a multinational that has decided to spend its money elsewhere in protest at our No vote.

The committee seems to operate on the basis that if enough people come before it and argue that the voters were wrong to display Un-European tendencies last June, this will be sufficient to convince the majority to recant when they are frogmarched back to the polling booths next year. You know, it’s so crazy it might even vork. Sorry, work.

Surveys: tell us something we don't already know

You have to love these surveys that spend huge amounts of time and money finding out things that most of us know already. Eating too much makes you fat. No! Walking for an hour every day improves your fitness. Get out of here! Now we learn, courtesy of a study published in Nature magazine, that entrepreneurs exhibit more “highly adaptive, risk-taking behaviour” than cautious people. Who’d have thunk it?

Apparently entrepreneurs also have the ability to make quick decisions under stress. Sensational! The best bit is finding that risk-taking and quick decision-making are linked to the neurotransmitter dopamine, so perhaps a drug could be developed to help people overcome risk aversion.

Haven’t these boffins heard of cocaine?

Plane Insulting

Once Ryanair’s publicity machine gets you in its sights, there’s no hiding place. Bertie Ahern, Mary O’Rourke, Pope Benedict XVI, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy are just some of those who have been lampooned by the airline in the past.

Now even Rosanna Davidson, our former Miss World, has been chewed up and spat out by its PR monster. Some might object to “the girls of Ryanair” stripping off for a calendar to raise money for the Simon Community, a charity for the homeless, but Rosanna has a more pressing concern: the absence of any Irish cabin crew from the venture. “If I was organising it, I would have made sure that Irish women were involved because it’s an Irish charity and Irish fundraising,” she said.

In a typically understated response, Ryanair claimed the comments from Chris de Burgh’s little girl “bordered on racism”.

Cowen owes us a history lesson

The Brits believe their economy is facing its toughest test in 30 years but, according to Brian Cowen, we’re witnessing the worst economic crisis in a century.

The only benefit in plucking a statistic like that out of the air is it allows Biffo to claim our financial downturn has nothing to do with him. It is also the kind of statistic that brooks no argument. There’s barely a person alive today who can outline exactly what was going on in 1908.

Were the capital’s merchant princes forsaking city-centre dining rooms due to fears they might not be able to repay that loan taken out to buy a swish place in Rathgar? Perhaps the country’s pony and trap merchants were sitting around waiting for the Asquith government to introduce a scrappage scheme that might boost their business. Or maybe haberdasheries were offering 40% off to drum up business in the middle of November.

The taoiseach should enlighten us.

Budget is not up to the standard it used to be

Those civil servants who allowed Brian Cowen to stand up in the Dail last December and read out the most inaccurate budget in the history of the state all received bonuses under a performance management system that became payable in 2008.

In this year’s budget the same individuals managed to screw up on medical cards, the income levy, disability allowances and airport tax. They must be licking their lips in anticipation of the rewards that await them next year.

Liam Fay is away

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