SMOKES & DAGGERS

A mischievous mix of (mostly) news

FINE

Gael leadership hopeful Simon Coveney will go to any length to win support. The minister was seen mixing with the commoners on Wednesday. One veteran noted: ‘It was astonishing, as miraculous as the appearance of the Virgin Mary in Knock. Simon actually had a real drink – normally he wanders around carrying a glass of water with some green thing that looks like lettuce stuck in it.’

THE

Taoiseach bounced into a Dáil reception for visiting British dignitaries during the week, summoned Michael McDowell, pictured right, over to him in the manner that one might beckon a waiter and started speechifying about how we don’t have horns on our heads in Ireland. Afterwards, one fretful diplomat asked: ‘Has he always been like that or is it just since he lost power?’ Smokes had to explain that he has always been like that.

OPPOSITION

to water charges has created some strange bedfellows, Fine Gaelers were quick to point out this week. It’s not often that you find Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the AntiAusterity Alliance on the same team. It was, one source noted, ‘interesting to see our next government in action’. Another said: ‘It’s the strangest alliance, Barry Cowen and Paul Murphy, since the entente cordiale between Britain and France in 1914. And we all know what that led to.’

AT LEAST

two Fine Gael TDs failed to make it on time for an early morning meeting of the water committee during the week… and apparently it caused a panic in the party ranks. ‘They were running around like earwigs after a stone is lifted,’ an unkind source said.