IT’S ALWAYS BETTER TO THINK FIRST AND THEN TALK, REGINA

REGINA DOHERTY would talk for Ireland. And that’s the problem.

Someone really should have a word with the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection and ask her to please – pleeeese – just think BEFORE gifting the nation her views.

Despite reasoned argument from the National Women’s Council of Ireland that the referendum to remove the infamous ‘women’s place is in the home’ article from the Constitution should not go ahead as planned on October 26 with the Presidential election, Doherty insisted the opposite.

The Women’s Council wants a proper public debate on the proposed removal of this hugely offensive Article 41.2 in order to consider what, if anything, should replace it.

Now, on matters of this nature you’d want to be a political ninnyhammer to take on the Women’s Council. And, sure enough, within hours of Doherty standing firm on the referendum date the Government did a reverse ferret. There would be no referendum next month.

Doherty is one of these irritating breed of politicians, like Eoghan Murphy and Simon Harris, who believe that silence is the enemy.

That’s why they prattle on, spouting confused inanities that nobody has the slightest inclination to follow. For them, deliberation is to be avoided at all costs which, of course, betrays a politics that is only flash, thinly coated veneer.