Áras 'Virgins' excite Nolan with visit to old school

TWEET OF the Week comes from Labour TD for Galway West Derek Nolan. He was absolutely delighted when Uachtarán na hÉireann paid a visit to his old school yesterday. Naturally, he immediately took to the Twitter machine to inform the world of this wonderful moment.

“President Michael D Virgins visiting my old primary school in Mervue right now. Strange mix of memories.” Strange, right enough.

According to Derek’s riveting tweets, the Mervue choir performed a beautiful version of Ride On for the visiting Virgins, Michael and Sabina.

And the biggest lesson of the day was learned by past pupil Nolan, who now realises you must always look before you tweet.

“Major auto-spell error!” he told his 939 followers, before deleting President Michael D Virgins from his timeline.

Meanwhile, there is no technology in existence to auto-correct the lovely Kerry accent of Michael Healy-Rae. And thank heavens for that.

Deputy Healy-Rae has been raising the plight of television viewers in remote parts of the Kingdom who will find themselves without a service when the digital switchover happens next month.

He issued a press release about the situation on Thursday, outlining the efforts he has been making on their behalf.

“I had requested that Minister Pat Rabbitte and officials from RTÉ should attend a giant Oireachtas committee meeting to discuss analogue switch-off,” he writes.

Monster meeting. A great idea. But they’ll have to book a giant joint to fit everyone in.

And finally, just because this column is so perfect and, er, never gets anything wrong, we wish senior counsel/junior minister Alex White all the best in his new job with James Reilly.

He’ll have been very pleased with the nice write-up he got in the Irish Daily Star yesterday morning. And the lovely picture of veteran Fine Gael handler Frank Flannery that accompanied it.

When the Tánaiste telephoned Alex on Thursday with the good news – a junior ministry, yay! – he was somewhat taken aback by the response.

There was no response. Silence. The phone went dead.

Eamon Gilmore didn’t know whether Alex had fainted with shock, joy or dread at the prospect of a close working relationship with Calamity James in the dysfunctional Department of Health.

But it was merely a technical hitch. A dropped mobile phone call between New York (Gilmore) and Brussels (White).

Blushing Alex happily accepted Eamon’s proposal.