A Cabinet meeting where?!

A Cabinet meeting in a rat-infested classroom to highlight the problems in education? Or how about the weekly top brass gathering on hospital trolleys to bring attention to the ailing health service?

Maybe our Ministers could hold their weekly meeting of minds on the queue for food parcels outside the Capuchin Friary on Dublin’s Church Street to let people know about the new poor of Ireland?

Sounds a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it? Well when it comes to other Governments around the globe, they have no problem changing the location of their cabinet meetings to highlight problems.

Take the Nepalese Government, for example. They will be holding a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest later this month to highlight climate change in the world.

The entire cabinet of the 22-party coalition will move to the Everest base camp at an altitude of 17,585 feet for the landmark meeting.

The decision by the Nepalese cabinet to decamp from their cosy offices to Everest base camp comes just weeks after the government of the Maldives held an underwater cabinet meeting - YES, you read that right - to focus global attention on rising sea levels ahead of a key UN summit in December.

So if our Government want to highlight the conditions of schools in Ireland, I’m sure the INTO would be able to come up with a few choice locations for them where they could meet the local rats and mice that inhabit the school buildings on a frequent basis?

Or there are bound to be plenty of people who have been forced to endure long waits on hospital trolleys waiting for admission who would be honoured to point the way for the politicians.

But it seems that when our cabinet moves from the cosy confines of government buildings, they have more luxurious venues in mind - think back to the stately Emo Court outside Portlaoise in 2003 or Avondale House in Co Wicklow in 2006.

But we can all live in hope!

Lenihan takes the bulbs by the horn!!

Don’t be fooled by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s dark eyes or the fact that he seems to have no problem lurking through the corridors of power in the dead of night getting NAMA bills passed.

Brian is no vampire and his eating habits prove this!

It seems economist David McWilliam’s new book is a book of contradictions (everybody seems to be contradicting his version of events) but one nugget that stuck in our minds from it was the fact that Brian Lenihan is a huge fan of garlic - RAW garlic!

Just as easily as someone would pull an apple out of their pocket and bite into it, Brian will take whole cloves of garlic into his mouth and munch away to his hearts’ content.

Well his heart must be very content with this unusual eating habit as raw garlic is known for its health benefits - lowering blood pressure, reducing high cholesterol, regulating blood sugar and reducing bacterial infections.

But it also has another very handy benefit which Brian Lenihan obviously finds useful for dealing with pesky TDs/union bosses/bankrupt developers - raw garlic is great for getting rid of intestinal parasites and worms!!

TDs tighten their belts!!

And so RTE’s Operation Transformation is making a bee-line for tubby TDs and mountainy ministers.

Our politicians have been telling us to tighten our belts for ages now, so it will be comforting to know that after losing a few pounds, the politicians themselves will be able to tighten their own belts.

Needless to say, the letter from the producers of Operation Transformation was received with much hilarity by some TDs, who have now made slagging each other off a bit of a national pastime inside the corridors of power.

But our lips are sealed on the identity of the Minister who, on receipt of the letter, laughed and said: “If they could come up with a way of getting me to put on some weight, I would be in.”

Ciaran's Tweet Tooth!

Spoilsport - that’s what I say to the boring UK politician who has tabled a motion to ban ‘crackberries’ during meetings.

Liberal Democrat John Pugh has been so driven to despair by the sight of colleagues tapping away on their Blackberries/Crackberries and iPhone smartphones that he wants them banned altogether.

He said that ‘while recognising the enormous benefits of the modern smartphone’, he regrets the ‘tendency of Honourable Members to interact with these devices during select committee meetings and short debates’.

Any visitor to the public gallery in the Dail chamber will see - from time to tome - our trusty TDs tapping away on such phones.

It may be to simply check their emails or to text staffers of their needs.

But one TD stands head and shoulders above the others when it comes to using smartphones for the public good - Green TD Ciaran Cuffe.

Ciaran has become not only a serial blogger but a serial ‘tweeter’ as well and on the odd occasion, he has been known to ‘tweet’ from the Dail chamber.

Some luddites may think that this is a thundering disgrace but we disagree.

In this age of new technology, it is refreshing to get the opinions - albeit brief with Twitter - of a TD who is actually sitting in the chamber.

And when he is not ‘tweeting’ from the Chamber, he is ‘tweeting’ from either his office or when he is out and about letting people know what he is up to.

So keep up the good work Ciaran - this column is following you as are almost 700 other twitterers!

Something just doesn't add up......

Writing cheques they simply can’t cash - that is the view of the Government by Fine Gael’s Lucinda Creighton.

No - the Government hasn’t started it own cheque kiting racket, but its costings in relation to the new Programme for Government would keep a mathematician on their toes.

Part of the new PfG is the addition of 500 new teaching posts over the next three years.

Lucinda posed a question to Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe as to how much these 500 extra teachers would cost and was told - plainly and simply - that he didn’t know!

Naturally enough, Lucinda was left puzzled - as were the rest of us.

“Less than two months before the budget, Fianna Fail and the Greens are signing up for commitments that they haven’t even costed,” she said.

The estimated cost of the plan is in the region of €32m a year.

But as Lucinda says, ‘at a time when the Government desperately needs to cut the public sector wage bill, it is ridiculous and dishonest to be making uncosted commitments in response to unrealistic demands’.

The True Meaning of Campaigning Politics.

When it comes to campaigning politics, you can’t get more campaigning that Labour’s Joe Costello.

It has been a labour of love for him but there is no sign of him giving up on his weekly protest outside the Mater Hospital to highlight the continuing A&E crisis there.

While most politicians may be enjoying a lie in on a Saturday morning or engaging in cushy clinics with their constituents, Joe heads along to the Mater EVERY Saturday morning to highlight the overcrowding at the hospital.

“The A&E crisis must be tackled but this cannot be done without adequate community care and step down facilities, so that we can be sure that acute beds are being used by those who need them most,” he said.

A lot of his political colleagues could learn a valuable and humbling lesson from Gentleman Joe.

Eamon Ryan and Social Networking!

It is not often that one can mention a senior minister and porn in the same sentence - but today I will!

Communications Minister Eamon Ryan will officially open a special summit on the internet and social networking in Dublin tomorrow (Friday).

According to the organisers of the event, one of the topics up for discussion will be porn on the internet.

“For the first time in the internet’s near 20 year history, porn has been surpassed as the number one activity online.”

And what has surpassed it? Social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and Twitter.

Can we expect Eamon Ryan to follow in his party colleague Ciaran Cuffe’s footsteps and become an accomplished tweeter? We will wait and see.