Food fest makes economy report hard to digest

It’s not all bad, being a politician. Take last Wednesday, when reports began to reach us of swarms of deputies lurching unsteadily down Kildare Street at 10pm.

They were returning from the Shelbourne Hotel to Leinster House for a vote after chief whip Paul Kehoe and his opposition colleagues managed to persuade them to leave the biggest beano of the year to do their parliamentary duty.

The IFA had invited Oireachtas members to a “reception showcasing Irish food”. It was the talk of Leinster House on Thursday. While the event was in full swing, certain TDs and senators texted photographs of the groaning tables to their colleagues, urging them to drop everything and get the hell to the Shelbourne ballroom.

“It was a massive, massive spread,” a deputy told us. “Some of the city lads decided not to go because they didn’t want to have their ears bent about farm subsidies and the like, but once the word got back they legged it up.”

IFA president John Bryan and his people put on a great show. The food was laid out on tables around the room. The menu of what was on offer took up four pages of the sizeable invitation.

Where to start? Ballycotton shrimps, pork with apple puree, slow-cooked belly of lamb, glazed Tipperary ham, dry-cured bacon, lamb stew, roast on the bone ribs of dry aged Hereford prime beef . . .

’Scuse us. Bit of wind there. That’s better. Where were we?

Chicken cacciatore, pressed beef terrine, smoked fillet of trout, organic cheese tartlets, handmade sausages, oodles of the best black and white puddin’, roasted saddle of Kerry lamb, smoked haddock in onion sauce, shredded duck, smoked salmon, seafood chowder . . .

Don’t get us started on the desserts.

The Taoiseach made a very entertaining speech. How does that man manage to do so much? He had a very full, and very successful, day on Wednesday – his Dáil speech on the Cloyne report has ensured his place in history. In the middle of everything, he found the time to take his 11 Seanad nominees out to lunch.

But back to the blowout. Eight choices for pudding. Not to mention the cheeses. And then there was a selection of microbeers.

“The wine is gorgeous,” rhapsodised a deputy as he tottered back to the hotel from Leinster House after the vote. “It’s only fablous. Fablous. We’re a great country.”

The deputies and senators were in great form. Labour’s TDs were full of the joys when they nipped away to vote, joking that they hoped the microphones were on by mistake.

Dominic Hannigan gave the microphone at his seat a playful swipe and broke it in two. He was so consumed by guilt that he reported himself to the authorities the following morning and offered to pay for the damage. Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte took great pleasure in calling him a vandal.

Back in paradise, Enda Kenny told his chomping audience to keep an eye on Michael Ring because he was overdosing on the Rathmore honeycomb ice cream called “Deadly Buzz.” The Ringer loves his ice cream.

Michael Healy-Rae was watched in fascination by colleagues as he stacked teetering towers of Carlingford oysters on his plate.

The event started at 6.30pm and finished after midnight.

Unfortunately, it rather took from Peter Mathews’s presentation on the state we’re in, which he arranged for the Leinster House audiovisual room.

He held a similar meeting last week with guest Constantin Gurdiev, which was very well attended. This time, many of Peter’s colleagues forsook talk of the economy and guest speaker Colm McCarthy for the IFA’s grub. Oh, and there was a free bar as well.

Bog-standard junkets? Nuts!

A teacher of our acquaintance was entertaining us recently with her assertion that it's impossible to have a football match with a class of high babies because they all run after the ball, all of the time.

High babies came to mind when an Oireachtas committee went on their school tour on Wednesday to a bog in Offaly.

Members of the Joint Committee on Environment, Transport, Culture and the Gaeltacht visited the proposed location for a €560 million eco water park and reservoir on the site of a 200-hectare bog at Garryhinch. They were given a tour and a full briefing from Bord na Móna regarding the plans.

There are 26 members of this committee; half a dozen of them managed to drag themselves on to the bus for the trip.

They didn't include Luke "Ming" Flanagan, who has a great interest in bogs, or Fianna Fáil's Timmy Dooley, who is very vocal in the rump of deputies who are dead set against any drop of Shannon water going to Dublin.

The committee's chairman, Ciaran Lynch of Labour, joined a large number of Bord na Móna suits for the exercise, along with local TDs Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy (Fine Gael), Brian Stanley (Sinn Féin) and Sen John Whelan (Labour). James Bannon (Fine Gael), who loves a day out, came along, as did Kevin Humphries of Labour, the only townie who bothered to attend.

One wonders how many of the 26 would have signed up if the fact-finding trip had been to a bog overseas.

A photographer arrived to capture the intrepid parliamentarians as they looked over the area. "Don't look at me – look away into the distance," she urged them. But, just like high babies clustering around a football, they couldn't be told.

Finally, the exasperated lenswoman let out a roar. "This is a camera, lads, not a bag of nuts!"

Hogan creates a real storm at Met party

Evelyn Cusack of Met Éireann had to apologise to RTÉ viewers on Friday for getting the forecast wrong on Thursday: they didn't predict the heavy rain for the Dublin area. Could it be that Evelyn was still in shock from Wednesday morning's visit by Big Phil to their Glasnevin HQ?

The wonderful Evelyn showed the Minister for the Environment, in some detail, the module system they use for predicting the forecast. Clearly, the system went into shock after his visit.

Hogan was among the big hitters who attended the retirement bash for Raidió na Gaeltachta's Eoin Ó Murchú in the Dáil bar on Thursday night.

Ó Murchú, fondly known as Boris Beag, also bowed out as chairman of the Oireachtas press gallery after many years battling politicians and senior civil servants who think their world would be far better if meddling hacks were barred from the premises.

Eoin handed the baton on to Fionan Sheahan, of the Irish Independent, who was immediately entered into a height contest with Hogan. To the media's dismay, and after heel heights were carefully examined, Phil (6ft 5in) beat Fionnan (6ft 4½in) by a short scalp after the newsman's hair was ruled inadmissable.

The Minister rounded off a busy week last night at a ceremony in Blackhall Place when Attorney General Máire Whelan SC was made a Bencher of the Kings Inns.

Ministers Michael Noonan and Pat Rabbitte were also on the invitation list, along with the Taoiseach, who, we hear, dropped in for a while and was all smiles after his trip to Brussels.

Michael D hits the high C

Every great poet has a funny little secret, and Declan Kiberd let the cat out of the bag when he launched Michael D Higgins's latest collection of poetry this week.

"He was one of Ireland's first karaoke artists," revealed Kiberd. "One of my earliest memories is of him putting on his Edith Piaf long-playing vinyl record in his home in Renmore in the summer of 1973 and lustily singing along with the little bird: 'Non, je ne regrette rien.' "

Can't you just picture it?

"As he was little more than 30 at the time, I told him that it was a bit young to be already engaged in reckless, retrospective self-justification, and that Sinatra's My Way must be next in the deck. 'Oh no, Kiberd,' he intoned. 'If you want the full emotional tilt, I'll give it to you straight.' Then he dropped the needle on the vinyl and played The Carpenters."

The academic then launched into a mournful recitation of the lyrics of Yesterday Once More before going on to recall his time canvassing for Michael D during an early attempt to get into the Dáil. He and a fellow Trinity man went around "preaching solutions 'à la Michael D' to foreigners in Indreabhán and An Caislann".

"My roommate and I must have cost Michael D at least 800 votes; Trinity students trying to tell the people of Galway West what was good for them. A few years later, as soon as the TCD students stopped canvassing for him, he got elected."

The blurb for New and Selected Poems, by Labour's candidate for the presidency, includes a line from a review in The Irish Times: "The refreshing sound of a genuine speaking voice."

Do the rest of us yodel?

Kiberd said he once asked Brendan Halligan whether Michael D was in the left or the right wing of the Labour Party.

"Oh, no. Michael D is the only representative of the transcendental wing of the party," came the reply.

An ill-advised appointment?

Just as well, perhaps, that Fine Gael didn't select the Independent MEP Pat Cox as its presidential candidate. This week's European Voice newspaper reports that the European ombudsman (Europe's answer to Emily O'Reilly), Nikiforos Diamandouros, has criticised the European Commission for hiring Cox as an unpaid special adviser from 2007 to 2010. Cox's appointment to advise Meglena Kuneva, who was commissioner for consumer protection, was challenged by Corporate Europe Observatory, a campaign group for transparency, which protested that Cox also worked for the likes of Microsoft and Pfizer and said this posed a potential conflict of interest.

Issuing his opinion last Monday, the ombudsman said the commission had "failed adequately to follow its own procedural rules".

All kinds of everyone in race for the park

Plenty of time to go yet before the final runners go to the post in the presidential election. Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin are playing their cards close to their chests, while Independent TDs and Senators are playing hard to get.

Sen David Norris is not finding it easy to secure the 20 Oireachtas members' nominations required to get him on the ballot paper. But he had 15 names by yesterday afternoon and is hopeful of landing the remaining five. The prevailing view in Leinster House is that it would be unfair if Norris wasn't given the chance to run.

One left-wing Independent TD said on Thursday that, while he hasn't declared his support for any candidate, he and like-minded colleagues "wouldn't like to see David stuck".

The Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin, has set up a committee to examine his party's options with regard to the presidency. Dev Óg, aka Éamon Ó Cuív, is on the committee and will not be looking for the nomination.

It has been whispered that the party continues to hope that a dream candidate will come along, and it is still sweet on the idea of the broadcaster Miriam O'Callaghan entering the race.

Sinn Féin spoke to the artist Robert Ballagh this week about the possibility of his making a bid for the park. Left-wing TDs and senators who have yet to indicate support for a candidate are watching developments.

Meanwhile, strong but unconfirmed reports are reaching us about Dana Rosemary Scallon, who polled well when she ran for the presidency 14 years ago.

She was also one of the two politicians who tried but failed to challenge Mary McAleese's uncontested return to the Áras last time out, the other being the former Green Party minister Eamon Ryan.

We hear that her supporters have been taking soundings about her prospects. Apparently she fared well in a private poll they conducted, so don't be surprised if she throws her hat into the ring again.