Coveney displays lots of horse sense

The Dáil eased slowly back to business on Wednesday morning after the long Christmas break as the Seanad strengthened its case for abolition by not bothering to sit at all.

The members of the Upper House will grace us with their presence next week.

With Enda Kenny away on EU business, it fell to Eamon Gilmore to get proceedings under way for 2013. The last thing the Tánaiste expected to be talking about was horse meat in beef burgers.

At least he could depend on a sound and solid briefing from Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, who enhanced his reputation by handling the contamination controversy with calm authority and decisiveness.

He fronted up for any number of radio and television interviews, but there’s only so much beef a man can take. This might explain why Simon has decided to cancel his planned trip to Green Week in Berlin today.

The Minister is in the city this morning for a summit meeting of agriculture ministers and had pencilled in a bilateral meeting with his German counterpart, Ilse Aigner, at the annual food and agriculture show.

Bord Bia used to have a presence at the popular exhibition, but pulled out a number of years ago.

Flying the Tricolour is Berlin bar baron Paddy Scanlon. He’s planning to serve locals stout and Irish stew, which is, of course, made with lamb.

Still, perhaps Simon is doing the right thing by steering clear. The Germans, normally possessed of a benign attitude towards Ireland, seem to have a thing about the Irish and horses.

Our Berlin correspondent tells us that throughout the euro zone crisis he can recall just one occasion when Ireland suffered a sustained bad press from the German media. It concerned reports that horses are big victims of the Irish economic crisis and have been abandoned and maltreated because people can no longer afford to keep them. The Irish Embassy ended up getting dozens of abusive phone calls while the German media ran outraged stories about the plight of these wonderful animals.

Under the circumstances, maybe Simon is right to steer away from a situation where he might have to address the subject of horses or horse meat for his sensitive hosts.