Jim D'Arcy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like Senator Brennan, I attended last night's Fine Gael constituency executive AGM in the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dundalk. There were protestors outside it. They were cacophonic, but they treated people with respect and did not interfere with where one was going or what one was doing. I was happy about that and congratulate the young man in charge.

In contrast, Saturday in Jobstown saw a middle-class, privately educated, pretend socialist who saw his chance and grabbed it with both hands. He is leading people astray, but he will not be there when the you-know-what hits the fan. When it comes to what happened to the Tánaiste, I will remind him of what Synge wrote in "The Playboy of the Western World", namely, "there’s a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed". Let him put that in his pipe and smoke it whatever way he will.

With others, I attended the GPO on Wednesday for the launch of the 1916 commemorations. The men and women who fought and "hurled the little streets upon the great" "in bloody protest for a glorious thing" would turn in their graves to see such a carry-on in our State. Shame.