PDs' shopping basket proves most nourishing on a €14 budget

The Progressive Democrats emerged victorious in a shopping basket competition yesterday, but Fianna Fáil will be happy to hear it had nothing to with the negotiations on government. Which is just as well. Because when she turned up for a political supermarket challenge in Dublin, Fiona O'Malley had a basket on her bike big enough to hold a meeting of the PD parliamentary party.

Her shopping list proved a modest one, however, limited as it was by a spending cap of €14. This was the amount each of five TDs was allowed to spend feeding a family of four for a day, in a promotion to mark National Healthy Eating Week.

Junk food was forbidden and they were shopping against the clock. Ms O'Malley was joined in Dunnes Stores by fellow Dáil newcomers Olwyn Enright (FG), Charlie O'Connor (FF), and Paul Gogarty (Green Party), as well as returning TD Mary Upton (Labour). It was the new, improved Dáil in five exciting varieties, but in a symbolic commentary on the state of Irish politics, they had all converged in the centre (the shopping one on St Stephen's Green) for the 45-minute challenge.

Like the election campaign, the exercise was crippled by a consensus on spending. The five politicians displayed a morbid fear of running over budget.

As the check-out lady then discovered, whenever they're presented with a bill, politicians like to have several readings of it. So when Ms O'Malley's basket came in at €14.01, and she was offered a loophole by the organisers in which half of her red pepper could be included in the budget for "tomorrow", she refused. That would be massaging the figures, she said, opting for a smaller cheddar.

And so it went. Paul Gogarty also revised the terms of his basket, excluding an avocado and a banana from his original line-up, to make way for the non-negotiable "luxury fruit and nut selection" - a cornerstone of Green Party policy. But the prize for fiscal rectitude went to Mary Upton, whose initial purchases amounted to a mere €11.67, adding fuel to criticisms that Labour has been paralysed by the need to appear prudent.

On the core principle of feeding a family of four, all five were deemed successful. Ms O'Malley got the nod from the judges, however, on the grounds that her basket would produce the most servings. Look what we did for a family of four, you could hear the PDs saying, imagine what we could do for eight.