NO outcome to the Portmarnock Golf Club saga could be satisfactory. Had the Supreme Court ruled against the club's men-only membership policy, it would have been a victory for the doctrinaire egalito-feminists whose appetites for more political victory would have been whetted. Yet defeat in this case has not caused them to arrest their ideological gallop but has merely enabled them to discern yet more victimhood, and prompted cries for changes in the law.

The National Women's Council (NWC) has "expressed concern" that the Supreme Court has upheld the right of Portmarnock's Men's Golf Club to remain as is. Calling for a change in the Equal Status Laws, the vice "chairperson" (as if a man could ever hold the position) of the NWC, Therese Murphy, said: "If the law cannot be invoked in a clear case of discrimination, it is no use in the struggle for equality." She added: "We need strong, effective laws to tackle deep inequalities in Irish society, and we need them now."

The state gives the NWC around a million euro a year. There is no male equivalent. Moreover, there are no men on the council, its board, or its various committees. Possibly some he-plumbers are called in to fix the loos after the girls have been too free with the Andrex, but otherwise it's a male-free zone. This is not some free association of individuals, like Portmarnock Golf Club, but a state body, established by statute and paid for by taxpayers' funds through Combat Poverty, the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, and the Department of Justice.

Therese Murphy complained: "In the case of Portmarnock Golf Club it is women who are excluded. In other cases it will be other groups."

Sooner or later, one of those groups will be "men"? Is the NWC unaware of how vulnerable it is to more vigorously intrusive "equality" legislation?

Yes, it no doubt presumes that government inspectorates will always be driven by the NWC political agenda; but the world does not work like that, most especially if the NWC wants the laws of the land to be invoked to support its cause.

For "feminism", "equal rights" -- or whatever other political ideologies that are driving the Equality Authority and the NWC forward -- will be of no interest to the Supreme Court. Nor will the sex of the judges be an issue: for one woman Supreme Court judge found for Portmarnock Golf Club, and the other against.

So change the law about sex discrimination, give it more teeth, enforce it more vigorously with watchdog officials, by all means -- and what then will the law, and the Supreme Court's interpretations thereof, make of the employment policies of the National Women's Council?

These are murky waters, without easy solutions. Should Ireland's few Choctaws be allowed to establish a free-association of Choctaws only?

Of course. And likewise, Maoris and Laplanders and Pathans, also. But what if people of purely Anglo-Saxon origin wanted to have an Anglo-Saxon Club in Dublin?

And what if they then wanted to start an Anglo-Saxon club in London, with Anglo-Saxon only staff, and an Anglo-Saxon only golf-club? Quite. For the sauce for the goose might well ruin the gander. Thus, counsel for the NWC argued that whereas it would not be discriminatory to have a gay-only club, it would be discriminatory to have a gay-only rugby club.

The Supreme Court -- metaphorically, me lud -- then complained of headaches, and asked him to stop.

Moreover, the Equality Authority has accepted that women-only book clubs might be discriminatory, and thus illegal.

And now I've got the headache. So what are we to make of the Irish Women's Lawyers Association or the Irish Deaf Women's Group, or any of the 150 or so women's groups that are affiliated -- if I may use such a scandalously sexist word that derives from the Latin for "a son" -- to the NWC?

Not much. If girls want to gather in groups to play hockey and have showers together, or read books, or talk law, that is their right.

The same for the men of Portmarnock: indeed, the rest of us should welcome their isolation in a Golfistan for penis-owners only because we are thus spared their company, their conversation and their taste in pullovers.

And yes, I know these are recessionary times -- but might the government not fund some on-site dormitories for them as well?

That means that we'd never see them at all, and they'd spend their entire lives gibbering away on their golf-rinks or golf-courts where they can be occasionally be used for strafing practice by the Air Corps.

And after three graveside volleys -- by a firing party armed with mashie niblicks, and wearing sweaters that can cause shipping to turn an immediate hard a-starboard at 10 nautical miles' range -- and they've buried Biffo or Bunter or Chalky beside the fifth coffea (as I think it's called), they can be allowed to finish their chukka in peace.

Then it's time for the dorm, and gosh, chaps, how utterly spiffing, it's Stinker's turn to pillow-bite!

kmyers@independent.ie

- Kevin Myers

Irish Independent