ABOUT THIS time two years ago, then taoiseach Brian Cowen shot to international notoriety after giving a radio interview at an ill-advisedly early hour on the second day of a Fianna Fáil “drink in”, sorry, parliamentary party conference.
Cruel suggestions by the Twitterati that the unpolished nature of the interview was due to the State’s leader being halfway between sloshed and hung-over, rather than simply “congested”, spread like wildfire around the globe.
The scene of the crime was, of course, the luxurious Ardilaun Hotel in Co Galway, where the State’s best and brightest economic minds will gather this week for a policy conference which starts on Friday and runs over the weekend.
The main focus at the Dublin Economics Workshop’s annual economic policy conference will be on the euro zone banking and sovereign debt crises, as well as Ireland’s fiscal consolidation programme, all of which could drive the most abstemious person to drink.
However, we have no doubt that the State’s dismal scientists will all be tucked up in bed at a sensible hour with a nice cup of cocoa, for fear of catching “Cowen’s congestion”.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)