The scramble for Squire's secret files; green with ennui over preferendum thingy; Lenihan pulls a fast one; wiping Mercs off ministerial faces; Tallaght's Checkpoint Charlie; FF TDs fit to be committed; Alan Shatter, you're a star; no weaning Varadkar off opportunism
It's over a year since Charlie Haughey died and still no sign of the definitive book.
Vincent Browne is in the middle of his magnum opus on the Squire, and has been in touch with the Haughey family looking for their co-operation. They haven't decided what to do yet.
It seems CJH amassed a huge amount of material during his years in public life. "Boxes and boxes of papers" is how one Kinsealy regular described his personal archive to us.
Thoughts of what sort of explosive information might be contained in the Haughey files came to mind at the launch in Dublin of Saving the Future: How Social Partnership Shaped Ireland's Political Success, a frothy little tome by Tim Hastings, Brian Sheehan and Pádraig Yeates.
Seán Haughey was among the guests. Impact general secretary Peter McLoone mentioned that Charlie had played a vital role in bringing about social partnership and wrote a number of papers on it. He told Seán he hoped it might be possible to acquire his father's papers for the second edition. People fell to wondering what other papers might be in the Squire's collection.
It seems certain all Haughey's papers will be given to Dublin City University next year, thus keeping them on the northside. That will be a cause for much weeping and gnashing of teeth in other history departments, not least, one presumes, in Charlie's alma mater, UCD.
It was a case of hands across the "Borda" in the Greens when one of the five candidates for the job of party chair helped a rival contender to collect the signatures he needed to run against him.
In what must rank as one of the most polite election campaigns in Irish history, the party couldn't even bring itself to use such a brutal word as "election" to describe the selection of a colleague to fill the post vacated by John Gormley. Instead, paid-up members voted in a "preferendum". Voting was not straightforward.
With the postal ballot closing at midday yesterday and a final poll of just under 800 predicted, a result might reasonably have been expected within an hour or two. However, the Greens chose to use a weighted PR system known as the Modified Borda Count. Five points allocated for a first preference, four points for a second preference, and so on.
This choice caused some worry among candidates. How will the points go if someone doesn't vote all the way down the line? Will they get their sums right? Whose bright idea was it in the first place?
When counting began, Paul Gogarty TD and Senator Dan Boyle emerged as the frontrunners, with councillor Bronwyn Maher, Belfast- based Dr John Barry and psychologist Phil Kearney lagging behind. Party activist Kearney only made it onto the ballot paper with Gogarty's help. The Dublin Mid-West TD rallied around to secure most of the 30 nominations needed to enter the race.
A very selfless act by the impish "GoGo", who would say that Greens look out for each other, although others might say he was hoping the inclusion of a fifth candidate might just split the field in his favour.
If that was the intention, it didn't work. Paul finished second, almost 200 points behind the new Green Party chairman, Senator Dan Boyle.
Good to see our fine upstanding members of An Garda Síochána going about their Justice Minister's duty without fear or favour.
At this week's Cabinet meeting, Bertie Ahern remarked drily to Brian Lenihan that "his fellas" have been very busy out on the roads recently. No shortage of Garda checkpoints, noted the Taoiseach, who told Lenihan that two of his drivers had recently been breathalysed by gardaí.
It is unclear if Bertie was a passenger when his Merc was pulled in. However, let it be said that the Taoiseach's security detail passed their tests with flying colours.
Having been informed of his department's diligence in stopping bulky men driving large black Mercedes cars, Lenihan then repaired to Enfield in Meath for a conference on cross-Border security. Running late, he was given a Garda escort to speed his passage. A radio journalist, also en route to the conference, was overtaken on the M4 by the Minister's little motorcade and he reported they were travelling well in excess of the speed limit.
This sort of thing has happened to the Taoiseach many times. Wily Bertie never admits to speeding; his tried and tested tactic is to laugh the incident off while shamelessly accusing the individual overtaken by his car of speeding too.
Lenihan didn't deny his vehicle may have been speeding, but that's a mere technicality. "No laws were broken. My car is a Garda car and it wasn't in any sense breaching the speed limit." But here's the best bit: "My car is not a ministerial car. It's a car driven by a member of an Garda Síochána." Just the sort of thing you'd expect a lawyer to say.
Still on the subject of ministerial cars, the days of political "Mercs 'n' Perks" will soon be no more. In the latest round of tenders for State cars, Mercedes Benz did not apply.
It's the end of an era. Then again, as Justice Minister Lenihan pointed out on Tuesday, there is no such thing as a ministerial car. In future, when Ministers come to choose "a car driven by a member of the Garda Síochána," they'll have to slum it in a BMW, Volvo or Lexus.
Unless they are Green Ministers, in which case their "car driven by a member of the Garda Síochána" will be a hybrid Toyota. Or a bicycle, which will not be driven by a garda, which qualifies it, in a strange sort a way, to call itself a ministerial car.
Have the gardaí got it in for politicians? First Bertie's drivers, now Charlie O'Connor, Fianna Fáil's self-styled Mr Tallaght. During his contribution to a Dáil Private Member's debate on drink-driving, O'Connor noted: "I have been stopped on three occasions at alcohol testing checkpoints on the Tallaght bypass. I was happy to co-operate, although on one occasion the garda manning the checkpoint was somewhat startled. Possibly due to the sad life I lead, the test result revealed a zero level of alcohol on each occasion." Why was the garda "somewhat startled?" In what state are the politicians he normally stops?
At least something good has come out of Bertie's appearance at the Mahon tribunal. It came courtesy of the deep pockets of the Sunday Independent, following an article by columnist Brendan O'Connor in which he rounded upon commentators and politicians for saying unkind things about poor Bertie. "The Taoiseach ain't perfect, but he's our imperfect Taoiseach," was his touching argument.
Unfortunately, in the course of referring to Ahern's marriage separation, O'Connor took a side- swipe at Alan Shatter, the solicitor turned Fine Gael TD, who is a leading practitioner and a published expert in the area of family law. Alan and his partners at Gallagher Shatter Solicitors demanded an immediate apology, saying they had been defamed on a number of points.
A full apology, along with a lengthy letter from the law firm, was published. And last week, a nice cheque for €20,000 arrived on the deputy's desk. The happy result is that charities Women's Aid and the Holocaust Education Trust are both better off to the tune of €10,000 each.
The backbenchers are restless again - or at least those Fianna Fáil deputies who fear they will lose out when Bertie hands out the prized and lucrative Dáil committee baubles on Tuesday. There are so many committees, each with a paid chairman, deputy chairman and convener, that a government deputy without the extra salary sweetener of a committee job is a rare species around Leinster House.
With Fine Gael bagging four chairmanships after telephone negotiations between the Taoiseach and Enda Kenny, some Fianna Fáil backbenchers are grumbling that Bertie was too soft on the Blueshirts and too profligate with what they see as their rightful jobs.
The Greens are taking another committee, shrinking the money pool another little bit. But the very strong rumour that Independent Kerry TD Jackie Healy-Rae is in line for a "comm-it-tee" chairmanship has caused dark mutterings of discontent. Why should the extra 20 grand, pensionable, that goes with the job be given to him?
Strong words during the week from Fine Gael's health spokesman, Dr James Reilly on the current pharmacists' dispute. Patients are being used as pawns in health sector negotiations, he thundered.
"The importance of the methadone dispensing programme for recovering heroin users cannot be overstated and the action by pharmacists to stop dispensing will affect 3,000 people. It is deeply regrettable that the dispute over the wholesaler's margin has been allowed to escalate in this way," said the former president of the Irish Medical Organisation.
James might do well to have a word on the subject with his fellow doctor and first-time deputy, Leo Varadkar. In September of last year, Leo, then an ambitious councillor, ran a very vocal and ultimately successful campaign against a chemist intending to operate a methadone dispensing service in a local shopping centre.
He hasn't looked back since.