Clare has some competition for Fungi in the form of a young female dolphin near Doolin. It has been variously named Mushroom, Orb and Dusty - after Dusty Springfield whose ashes were spread over the Cliffs of Moher last year. The Limerick Leader said the Doolin dolphin has been swimming with local children for the past month and is putting on shows.
"She soared in the air, did somersaults and gave piggyback rides to those who could catch her," it stated.
Duchas, the heritage service, has appealed for people not to swim with the dolphin, but the attraction has proved far to great and hordes of young swimmers have been captured on camcorders and in photographs playing with Dusty.
An embarrassing flea attack at an FCA camp in Tralee resulted in 60 women recruits being issued with new undergarments, Kerry's Eye reported. A local shop in Tralee supplied the underwear to the Defence Forces. "A full-scale preventive operation was put into place at the 200-year-old barracks on Tuesday after six women members reported symptoms that were diagnosed by a local doctor as related to flea bites," it said.
A local pest control company was called in to eradicate the pests and the 60 women recruits were rehoused. "We hate to say it - but we told you so," offered the Nationalist and Munster Advertiser in an editorial addressed to the Government. "In the recent by-election, the people of South Tipperary voiced loudly and clearly and angrily their opposition to the Government's nomination of Hugh O'Flaherty for the job of vice-president of the European Investment Bank.
"The Nationalist took the rare step of publishing a front-page editorial on the by-election slaughter for the Government candidate . . . In it we said that Mr O'Flaherty's nomination to the plum £147,000 a year job proved one misplaced act of political patronage too far for the electorate of South Tipperary . . .
"The Government, flying in the face of the wishes of the people, decided to stick to their buns and continue to dig deeper into the hole they had carved for themselves [until] shamefully, in the end, it was left to Mr O'Flaherty to fall on his sword . . .
"This is no way to run a country. This is no way to run our affairs in Europe. This is no way for a democratically elected Government to behave."
The Connacht Tribune predicted that the Government roller-coaster would go on, now that Mr O'Flaherty had alighted. However, it believed that the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, "must shoulder the blame for being so utterly out of touch with the political realities of the situation . . . and should be sitting in the political dunces' corner right now wearing rather large hats."
Politicians were supposed to have real judgment on what the ordinary people were feeling, because of their access to very large numbers of people "on the ground".
"So what happened to that intelligence gathering system? Or are they listening anymore to their grassroots?" it wondered, and added that Mr McCreevy would do well to listen to the pleas of long-term carers who had to pay 21 per cent VAT on incontinence sheets.
The Wexford/Wicklow People believed that "future students of politics looking for examples of how a government can be totally out of touch with public opinion need only take a look at the Hugh O'Flaherty fiasco". Mr O'Flaherty had never been asked to answer for his role in the affair to any statutory body and must now do so, it urged. "And as for the politicians who have destroyed Ireland's credibility on the European stage, they too should face the music.
"The call for Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy to resign is not as politically opportunistic as it may seem. His judgment has been called into question on so many occasions from his "dirty dozen" social welfare tax cuts to his holidaying the in the French villa of influential businessmen, and the introduction of individualisation in the last budget that the O'Flaherty fiasco should be the final nail in his political coffin. In a Finance Minister we need someone strong in resolve and judgment. In Mr McCreevy we have neither. Like Hugh O'Flaherty he, too, should exit the stage."
The Kerryman believed that Mr O'Flaherty, who is from Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, was a decent man who had been used as a stick to beat the Coalition Government. "On Tuesday, when the news broke that Hugh O'Flaherty was withdrawing his name for the EIB position, not one member of the Government, from junior rank right up to Taoiseach, was willing to make him or herself available for comment.
"That fact, more than any other action in this undignified affair, underlines the Government's lack of political and moral fortitude on this issue."
On its front page, the Kerryman published a picture of Mr O'Flaherty swimming near Cahirciveen, and in its editorial urged the media to allow him the time and space to get back his life.