FROM OUR REPORTER IN BLACKROCK, CO. DUBLIN

“WHAT IN THE name of God was I being paid for?”

The senior Irish civil servant who spoke these words, is furious at recent inferences that only one senior Irish Government figure had been working for London for the past thirty years.

“As far back as I can remember all I ever wanted to be was a British agent,” he told the Kookaburra Bugle. “Do you know how hard it was to get on Downing Street’s payroll? It was easier to get planning permission for council flats in Foxrock. And from what I know, without British secret service payments the Republic of Ireland would have gone bust in about 1985. They were all that lay between us and oblivion. God bless Her Majesty. My she rest in peace. But I still want my pension. I think that’s what this is about. Since Brexit the British don’t want to pay pensions. Well, just like in the 1980s, I need my money. I have commitments.”

It has long been rumored that during the darkest days of the 1970s and 1980s, when the southern Irish state had reached the level of economic basket case, when whole towns were emigrating daily, the country was being held together by British payments to spies and agents of influence across the ruling classes.

“Oh, indeed, it was a major expense,” said Brigadier X, whose real name was the subject of a D Notice in Britain in the 1980s. “Irish politicians were cheap, I’ll say that, grubby little people, but the media, they were ravenous. To buy the top notch scribblers and broadcasters, that forced us to increase our borrowing to such an extent we had to call in the IMF in 1976. North Sea Oil got us out of the hole but it was touch and go. Then there were the lawyers and businessmen, they were embarrassingly expensive. And most of them were third-rate idiots. I never understood why Northern Catholics wanted anything to do with these charlatans. Your average IRA volunteer was worth a hundred of the greasy muck savages we were forced to deal with in Dublin. The Irish police were particularly difficult. They wanted fringe benefits – you know, women, and other pleasures. Some unnatural. And free this and free that. Worse than the politicians. Garda Siochana? – we called them the Garda Suckonya. The lawyers just wanted cocaine. We had to set up a drug trafficking unit just to keep the Dublin Law Library supplied. I preferred Berlin. At least with the Russians you were dealing with honorable people. In Dublin, it was unpleasant to witness how easily they gave up their own. If there’s ever a major war I do not want these people on my side.”

In the final phase of the conflict in Northern Ireland, the various British intelligence services ran a formal examination for potential agents in Dublin.

“That’s how we decided in the end,” Brigadier X explained. “We had so many applicants that we developed a full examination. In fact we hired the Royal Dublin Society to conduct it. It was usually under the guise of some European project or other. I can remember one year, when we had at least three thousand candidates. We took four. Some appealed. Yes, they asked to have their marks reviewed. I grew weary. That’s when I retreated into “Useful Fools”, which was a department that just entertained cretins, of which there are many more than you might imagine among the Irish elites. I got meals and rugby tickets. That was terrific. I did have to listen to more than my fair share of Irish poetry as a price. I’m in therapy for that, as is the wife. Jesus Christ, but they don’t half go on. I’m glad I’m out of it now. Whoever we have over there, I’ll bet there’s ten lined up behind him, begging for employment. A nation of informers, that’s the Irish.”