Fine Gael has shot down the Government's idea of a civic honours list for the country's worthies. In a letter to chief whip, Seamus Brennan, FG's man on the special committee, Senator Maurice Manning, said the overwhelming majority of his frontbench "felt that the question of an honours system should not be pursued further and that an honours system was foreign to our traditions and essentially was more trouble than it was worth".
While the Labour Party discussed it at its parliamentary party meeting and there was a lot of talk about not apeing the British, a decision on the Government proposal has not yet been taken. But the outlook is bad for those aspiring to civic recognition and it would appear that without all-party support the whole idea will bite the dust once again.
