Well, OK, he wasn't a minister when he said it. Nor did he say it in public. He said it to colleagues, some time before the election, when they told him they'd laid a bet on the Greens coming well out of an impending Red C poll. They'd punted a princely 5. Which Ryan portrayed as a bit on the cheap side.

The quotation is on John Gormley's blog, a lively if sporadic account of his doings which the new minister has used very effectively. For example, even during the intense negotiations around the possibility of going into government, he used the blog to quickly contradict the rumour that he and Dan Boyle were rolling over and having their tummies tickled by Fianna Fail because they were so eager to get their hands on power.

It would be great, now that he's minister, if he continued to be as informatively informal on his personal website.

Realistically, though, the chances have to be small.

Already, it's appearing less frequently, because of the stresses, first of all of the negotiations to go into government with Fianna Fail, and more recently, one presumes, as a result of his efforts to get to grips with what goes on in the Custom House.

It's also become a little more proper.

Understandably, since he's now explaining the legal realities constraining his actions regarding the controversial Meath motorway.

A few short years back, commentators predicted that political blogs were going to change elections as we knew them. It never happened. Political anoraks and nerdy students visited them, but the general populace . . . here and overseas . . . has continued to draw the bulk of its information and impressions from mass media. So, for example, the footage of Gormley's leafletflailing fight with Michael McDowell undoubtedly reached more people, more frequently and more influentially than anything he wrote in his blog.

Although ministerial blogs might give the citizen the sense of being directly talked to, they're unlikely to become a major communications tool of cabinet members. Departments constantly upload press releases and speeches onto their official sites, elucidating every aspect of the minister's thinking . . . so where would be the gain?

Anyway, neither Gormley nor any other blogging minister would be able to tell us what we'd really like to know about what goes on at cabinet meetings: who opposes what and with how much vigour.

The other factor militating against informal minister communication by blog, is that the things last forever. Take the entry earlier in the year where Gormley, then only an opposition TD, sniffed at the pong of putrefaction and poo from the Ringsend sewage treatment plant in his constituency. The plant, he wrote, was actually running at full capacity when it was commissioned. The inference is that it therefore couldn't cope with the extra demands arising out of growing population density in the area: population increase anyone could have anticipated.

"Dick Roche has refused repeatedly to conduct an investigation into how such a fundamental error could occur, " the now-historic entry continued. "An investigation would reveal a lot about the workings of his departmentf" Of course, the writer of that entry is now heading up that very department, and coming to terms with the "permanent government" represented by experienced and able civil servants. The process would make for a fascinating blog, as the civil servants gently . . . as they always do . . . educate their new minister about the administrative realities of policy-implementation, and the minister . . . as they always do . . .

comes to understand just how limited is his capacity to ensure what he wants to do gets done quickly and perfectly.

It's a blog that's never going to happen, because of the confidential nature of civil service processes and advice, and also because of how busy the minister is going to be in the next few years.

Just as Roche did Gormley a favour by pausing to sign the document about the M3 as he cleared his Custom House desk, so Bertie Ahern did him a favour with his timing of the general election, effectively handing him four months to read himself into the department. Which he will. The new minister can be brought to a rolling boil by what he perceives as personal or party injustice (witness the Battle of Ranelagh, now showing on a YouTube near you) but he is also an open, clever and diligent student of his profession.

He would be greatly helped in mastering the wide brief for which he is now responsible if he were to fill all the noncivil service posts available to him. The danger is that, committed as they are to frugal rectitude, the Green ministers might decide not to employ all the economic and other (not PR) advisors to which they are entitled.

To show such admirably-intended restraint would be a huge mistake. Contracted advisors effectively triangulate the thinking of a minister. The minister is at one point in the triangle. The senior civil servants are at another point. The external advisors are at the third point.

The end result is a wider frame around every issue, and a productive interplay of ideas and constraints.

Appointing their full advisory complement would vastly improve the ability of the two Green ministers to deliver in government. Even if they can't let us in behind the scenes by writing full, frank and frequent blogs.