The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Royston Brady, has found himself at the centre of another political storm after accusing former office-holders of spending their time "drinking beer" and partying in the Mansion House.
The Fianna Fáil councillor, who apologised last February for calling his fellow members on Dublin City Council "clowns" and "pathetic", has also moved to defend his previous outburst, noting: "I wasn't half as colourful as I might have been."
In an interview in the latest edition of Moving In, an interior design magazine, Mr Brady said: "The bottom line in all of this is that they (the councillors) probably got more publicity than the lot of them have got in their whole careers and some of them have been in politics for 20 years."
Defending his record as lord mayor, he added: "I could have come in here and sat on my backside drinking beer down in the bar like a number of others have done in the past, partied like there's no tomorrow and not told anyone."
Labour councillor Mr Dermot Lacey, a former lord mayor of Dublin, called on Mr Brady to resign or "apologise, without reservation" to both councillors and former lord mayors for his latest remarks.
"His dishonest, unwarranted and disgraceful reference to previous holders of that office and his highly inflated view of his own contribution simply add to a legacy of embarrassed and embarrassing moments during Mayor Brady's term," he said.
