SMOKES & DAGGERS
A mischievous mix of (mostly) news
AN UNFORTUNATE is stricken and the cry goes out: Is there a doctor in the house? At a Fine Gael meeting you would think you’d easily find a handful of GPs and consultants ready to roll up their sleeves. Even more so at a meeting in posh Dublin Bay South. But no, apparently when an elderly party member collapsed recently at just such an event, with a 120-strong audience, the call was met with the response: ‘There are only barristers and accountants.’ So step forward pharmacist Kate O’Connell and her constituency rival Eoghan Murphy (who has a background in nuclear disarmament). Thankfully, the patient survived. SMOKES received an urgent missive sent Oireachtas-wide on Friday night: ‘A black Remus men’s coat with a blue lining was taken in error from the coat stand in the Members bar today. The coat belongs to Deputy Joe Carey.’ The note gave the mobile phone number of the Clare TD, pictured, and it continued: ‘Please check that you have taken the correct coat as Deputy Carey’s car keys are in the pocket.’ We hope Deputy Carey got the keys back, because as the song goes, It’s a long way from Clare to here. AN TAOISEACH had a very busy Saturday. Fresh from the Phoenix Park 5k run for Operation Transformation, where he shot his weekly video message, he visited the Chinese New Year celebrations on Dublin’s Custom House Quay. He then tweeted a picture of himself in a red Chinese scarf, joking that he would have to change it before the Ireland-Wales Six Nations match. He was later spotted at the Aviva cheering the Irish team to victory. But not before he tweeted congratulations on a jobs announcement in Longford at 2.17pm. That’s two minutes after kick-off. A tweeting Taoiseach’s job is never done. ANYONE concerned that the PTSB mortgage crisis might lead to a snap election should remember a momentous event that is scheduled to happen at the end of May. No, not the Abortion referendum; it’s when Ministers Shane Ross and Finian McGrath will both qualify for a full ministerial pension. Smokes can confidently say
there will be no election until then. DAVID NORRIS spoke out bravely this week for a much maligned minority: senators like himself. ‘One hundred and eleven of the civil servants employed by us in this House get more than we do,’ he told the upper house. ‘We are pilloried when we say this is not the rate for the job.’ What a cruel, unjust world.