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IF YOU’VE been around for a while, you wait for certain phrases to drop like over-ripe apples from the abundant tree of political cliches. One I’ve been anticipating for a while is “pot of gold”. It is the favourite phrase of those who wish to persuade us that there is no point trying to get more tax from the rich, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE

So here is the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, denouncing those who seek to “persuade decent working-class people that there was a great big pot of gold there and, if only the Government would do something about it, that would make their lot a great deal easier”. Oh sorry, no, that’s not Brian Lenihan, that’s Charles Haughey, a man who knew a thing or two about pots of gold at the end of Caribbean rainbows, in 1983.