THOSE who thought Minister Pat Rabbitte's effervescent wit had evaporated since he secured a perch in the Cabinet room can take comfort from his remark at a lunch with the Association of European Journalists last week. In an aside about the £100-a-plate lunch organised to "again access" to the Minister for Finance, Rabbitte quipped: "I've always regarded Ruairi as a national treasure but I think access to him should be free."
YES, we had snow here this week, but not this much. The kind man with the adorable little seal is not a Green but FE MEP for Dublin, Niall Andrews. The man standing guard in the background is General Bantu Holomisa, the South African minister who, as reported here last Saturday, lines out for the Irish parliamentary rugby team against the Westminster XV in London this weekend. The two have just returned from a trip to observe the threatened seal breeding grounds in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in Canada.
Mr Andrews says the General is as outraged as himself at the increase in the killings of thousands of White Coated Harp Seals for their skins. "I will be raising this matter of cruelty against these seals by the Canadian government with the European Parliament and the European Commission."