Whatever about her credibility, Mary Harney lost none of her sense of humour during the recent controversy over her holiday in a south-of-France apartment owned by Ulick McEvaddy.

She told a large audience at last week's official opening of the Guidant medical devices plant in Clonmel that if the company had "an old house or an old villa" to loan her next summer, she could guarantee it "five or six days of publicity". That was not to suggest, however, that the McEvaddy controversy had been good for her health. "In fact that publicity was such that I may need to avail of your cardiac rhythm management programme," she told her audience.