SMOKES & DAGGERS

A mischievous mix of (mostly) news

THE Public Accounts Committee came dangerously close to ‘a lovely girl’s moment’ last week. During cross-examination of An Bord Pleanála, Kate O’Connell TD noted that just three of the 10 board members were female. Trying to soothe the mood An Bord Pleanála’s Terry Sheridan said: ‘I will say of the three women on the board…’ At this point O’Connell intervened to say: ‘That they’re great women; please don’t say that.’ The flustered apparatchik could only continue ‘Well they are’.

GOD bless the Junior Minister who tweeted how they had responded to questions by your Irish Mail on Sunday that we didn’t include in a story last week. They advised us to ensure we include their responses in future. The tweet was quickly deleted after it was realised by HQ the minister had in fact contacted another journalist and publication instead. Inspires confidence, eh?

SYMPATHY was in short supply for Senator Terry Leyden when he told colleagues his ‘small rainy day fund of less than €1,000 in An Post’ was confiscated by the Dormant Accounts Fund. ‘I want my money back and I want it now,’ he said, noting that young people could have lost their communion money. Smokes lost ours long ago (and it wasn’t the dormant accounts that took it, mum!)

THE Star’s rugby correspondent Derek Foley is immortalised as ‘One F’ in the Ross O’Carroll Kelly books. As in there’s ‘only one F in Foley’. This week in Japan he was assigned a different press box than his colleagues – and tweeted about it. Paul Howard (O’Carroll Kelly’s alter ego) spotted the number on the press box. ‘You’re sitting in 1F? You’re a legend over there too?’ he replied.