SMOKES & DAGGERS
A mischievous mix of political asides with JOHN DRENNAN
THE return of Bertie Ahern to Fianna Fáil may yet prove fateful for all the wrong reasons. But the mood within the Country & Western wing of FF is best epitomised by former Cork TD Margaret Murphy O’Mahony’s tweet, ‘The king is back: long live the king’. Like Napoleon, returning from
Elba.
TWO politicians are holding out against increases in pint prices. Pints at FF senator Terry Leyden’s exact replica Dáil Bar in Castlecoote stand at €4.50. But Smokes’ efforts to find out how much a pint is in Healy Rae’s Kilgarvan bar were thwarted. ‘The old price’, was what we got.
IN THE recent election to replace Jennifer Carroll MacNeill as deputy chair of the Fine Gael parliamentary Party, Leo’s candidate Alan Farrell was beaten by newbie senator and Simon Coveney’s former driver Garret Ahearn.
The defeat was less a shifting of the sands, and more to do with the minimalist nature of Deputy Farrell’s campaign. One TD noted: ‘Alan didn’t canvass – he sent out a text message.’ Another, more cynical, source added, ‘Yes, he wanted to maximise his chances, by minimising his canvassing’.
BERNARD DURKAN hit a nail on the head while speaking on the nursing home charges: ‘Members of the opposition will continue to say the Government does not know what it is talking about. Maybe they are right, but that could apply to everybody in the House’.
LABOUR’S education spokesman Aodhán Ó Ríordáin dressed up as an average student – swapping his suit for an old Tshirt and a knitted hat – to provide some TikTok content. He looked every inch the Labour youth activist – except he appeared to be leafing through a copy of Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto. A bit leftwing for Labour?
AN INTERRUPTION by the Ceann Comhairle of Deputy Patrick Costello’s views on Garda body cameras induced the mournful complaint from the Green Party TD about how, ‘the flow of my nice video for social media has been broken’.