The prospect of the Dail being recalled next month to discuss Justice McCracken's tribunal report is not a happy one for the 166 deputies.
All have been electioneering since Christmas, and August is the one month each year when they get a break with their families. Should that be interrupted there could be all hell to pay on the domestic front. Quidnunc asked the Ministers what they are doing, but knows from previous experience that they tend to emphasise their home holidays rather than their foreign trips - although it must be said that many of them have to endure so much business travel that a spell away from it all in Ireland is a treat. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will be in Kerry with his daughters. Tanaiste Mary Harney is hoping for two weeks in Italy with friends. Noeleen McCreevy is expecting a baby in August so she and the Minister for Finance will be staying at home. It's her third and his seventh. John O'Donoghue plans two weeks abroad in the sun with this family but doesn't know where yet. Mary O'Rourke is, like many others, attending Jackie Gallagher's wedding in Cork on the August weekend; he works in the FF policy unit, and is then heading for Valencia in Co Kerry. Dermot Ahern will have a two-week family holiday but is not saying where. Brian Cowen will take the month off but has not decided on a destination as yet. David Andrews is going to his home in the West, as usual. Seamus Brennan will be in Ballyconneely in Connemara and will have a few days on the Shannon. The Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, James McDaid, is busy all month - at the Paris finish of the Tour de France to receive the baton for Ireland next year, the American Bowl, the Galway Races, the Mary of Dungloe festival, the Letterkenny International Folk Festival and the Humbert Summer School. And he denies strongly that he is Minister for Fun. Sport, he says, is full of politics and what he really needs is an oil geyser to pay for it all.