I'm afraid I'm old enough to remember this when it was on TV. As far as I can recall the Minister for Hardship was a send up of the Fine Gael leader Liam Cosgrave who was Taoiseach in the 1973-77 coalition government. There was another character they did, Richie Ruin, who was meant to the the then Minister for Finance Richard Ryan.
Yes the Minster for Hardship was Liam Cosgrave. Richie Ruin was Richie Ryan... Dimples was Michael O'leary the labour leader... Liam died last year.....
When they released the DVDs they coloured everything, apart from the Minister For Hardship sketch to which they put words on the screen saying that it was due to reasons of economy (a joke because when the DVDs came out the Celtic Tiger was still on.
The "Minister for Hardship" was performed by Eamon Morrissey, known for his work bringing the characters of Flann O'Brien to life on stage. The Minister was intended as a thinly disguised caricature of the unpopular Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave. Morrissey gave the Minister a life of his own, creating a character who could have walked off the pages of any Flann O'Brien novel, and is as memorable as any of the stock characters of Cruishkeen Lawn. The Minister may well have contributed to Cosgrave's downfall, with the real Taoiseach's image increasingly confused in the public mind with Morrissey's character. In any case, he remains the best remembered of the stock characters of Hall's Pictorial Weekly.
Morrissey was christened Eamon by his parents, in honour of Eamonn devalera, whose politics were ingrained in him. There are many factors in Fianna Fail's 1977 landslide victory. The obvious one was the giveaway manifesto but in truth, the coalition had already lost the election. The massive increase in income tax of 1976 was hugely influential, but "the minister for hardship" tipped the balance in favour of FF, in the year before the election.
