The Christmas before last, Treasury Holdings sent councillors in Dublin, (well some, at least, Quidnunc can't trace them all), a bottle of champagne and two glasses. A few had an extra merry Christmas as a result, others sent the gift to charity and a couple returned the present to sender. Dun Laoghaire FF councillor, Bernie Lowe, says she gave hers to the Southside Women's Action Network. "It has gotten so you can't accept anything any more," she says.
Last year, however, the councillors didn't have such a choice. Treasury Holdings sent them each a pig. A depiction of the proposed splendid Spencer Dock development or indeed its new acquisition, London's Dome, might have been expected. Instead councillors received a card telling them they had just been bought a pig for a poor Honduran family.
Some wondered if the pig was a purely humanitarian gesture in aid of a good cause, a clever PR exercise, or a message to councillors of just where they rank in public esteem in this era of tribunals. Everyone, though, was happy, including Lowe, the Third World families and the pigs themselves. But then Treasury's Johnny Ronan knows the value of pigs; his father was a pig farmer in Tipperary.