Frank Fahey. Top man. I'm very grateful to him, very grateful indeed. He's given me a right smug fit of the giggles. Getting nicked for speeding the same day as his boss at the Department of Justice announces a new traffic corps to combat dangerous driving and speeding. The irony is delicious, writes Killian Doyle.
The thought of his party colleagues giving him the cold shoulder while thanking their lucky stars it wasn't them brings joy to my twisted, bitter little heart.
Of course, he wasn't the one behind the wheel. It was his driver who got pulled over doing 79 in a 60 miles per hour zone. And it wasn't the first time - the same driver was ferrying the same minister around when he got caught speeding two years ago.
An apparently contrite Fahey had to eat a hefty slice of humble pie on RTÉ radio, apologising profusely for the indiscretion. "I very much regret that this happened," he said. (By 'this' I presume he means getting caught.)
"Obviously it is a mistake on our part and it shouldn't have happened and it is an embarrassment. I'm sorry for it." Ah, says me, finally a minister with enough backbone to put his hands up and accept the blame.
But then comes the cop-out, the Nuremberg defence as I like to call it: "I wasn't aware he was travelling at that speed as I was doing a bit of work at the time."
That's what annoys me. Fahey is the fourth minister whose state car has been pulled over for speeding in the past four years - the fourth that we know of, that is. And not one of them has done the decent thing and fallen on his sword.
They go on radio and make their bogus acts of contrition, but you know full well that, if it comes down to it, if they are put under pressure to resign, they'll always blame someone else. Namely the driver.
And, even worse, they'll do it in the most obsequious, sleeveen way possible. "Ah, suren isn't he a Garda, who am I - a mere civilian - to tell a Garda what to do?"
You can picture these ministers, all imperious in the back of their Mercs as their drivers tear around Irish roads, smug in the knowledge that no matter what happens, they're absolved because they aren't actually driving.
The notion that they, and particularly Fahey as junior minister in a department responsible for punishing people caught speeding, should adhere to the same laws as the rest of us and ask the driver to slow down, is alien to them. A shower of hypocrites, so they are.
That said, gardaí driving ministerial cars are authorised under certain road traffic laws and by-laws to break speed limits as long as they are legally authorised or have reasonable excuse.
But what was Fahey's "reasonable excuse"? Or John Donoghue's when his family were being rushed home from an All-Ireland final in 2000? Or Bertie's when his car left following journalists choking on tyre smoke while on the Wexford campaign trail in the last General Election?
The only minister I know of who has publicly spoken out against this situation is the former Minister for State for Transport, Dr Jim McDaid. "I don't see that there is any situation where a Government minister would need to speed," he said last February in response to revelations that Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne wrote to the National Safety Council to inform them that gardaí driving the Taoiseach and ministers can break the speed limit at their own discretion.
We all know what happened to the brave doctor. Suffice to say, he won't be enjoying the use of his own ministerial car ever again.
Power goes straight to your head and - evidently - straight to your driver's right foot.