SMOKES & DAGGERS

A mischievous mix of political asides

MICHEÁL Martin attempted to rebuild party morale after its Dublin Bay South by-election by citing John Lahart, who trailed in sixth in 2014 in the Tallaght byelection. (He was subsequently elected in 2016). Our FF source said one of his lessloved political children was heard to mutter: ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves.’

GLEEFUL anticipation among the declining drinking cohort of TDs that their Dáil Bar Shangri-La would be part of the grand reopening has been scuppered by one unfortunate timing factor. The bar will reopen – alas, just as the Dáil went on holidays this week. One TD cracked: ‘It sounds very like Aesop’s fable of the fox leaping for the bunch of grapes. They just keep on missing Nirvana.’

A NEW split has emerged within Fine Gael over whether the jet-setting of Simon Coveney is a boon or a loss. The absence of long dissertations on the delights of a moral foreign policy at FG parliamentary party meetings appears to have improved morale. But one envious TD did snap: ‘Simon is away so often globetrotting he appears to think he’s Joe Biden.’

IN A measure of how swiftly modern politics moves, after Ivana Bacik’s Dáil induction, there was talk among excitable Labour sources of her being trained up to be Labour’s next pick for the Presidency. It seems premature, but it was hard to disagree with the Labour grandee’s query: ‘What better apprenticeship could there be for the Presidency than two decades in the Seanad?’

THE Government’s grandly titled public engagement list, where in theory politicians are available to meet journalists, provided us with another classic in openness and transparency, when for the second week in a row just one media event from the entire Cabinet was listed.

As they followed this up with the cautious caveat of ‘time to be confirmed’ it was hard to argue with the declaration of one hack that the mandarins ‘are just trolling us now.’