QUIDNUNC: The Progressive Democrat's conference in Limerick today will have a buoyant air. The polls are so good for the Government, if not for the PDs themselves, that there is growing confidence the current coalition will be returned to power.
Mary Harney, despite a recent blip, continues near the top of the leaders' beauty contest, the old star Michael McDowell has returned to the fold and will run in Dublin South East and the high-profile, high-calibre farmers' leader, Tom Parlon, has joined the team to contest Laois/Offaly.
It is a happy position for a party going into an election but not, however, perfect. For a start, the polls could be a lot better - but by concentrating on the 15 constituencies it is contesting to date, the PDs hope to increase their seats from four to eight.
The abortion referendum, which the leadership has backed, is unpopular with large sections of the PD liberal membership, but losses there could be offset by gains elsewhere, following Harney's demand for financial transparency on the national stadium and the subsequent parking of the project.
In her leader's address tonight, which will be shown live on RTÉ, the Tánaiste will argue that the country's economic success was won through PD pro-enterprise/low-tax policies. In an election rallying call, she will warn that this success could be frittered away by voting for the wrong parties and it is vital not to assume that the economic success will be maintained regardless of who next takes power.
Elsewhere over the weekend, there will be a presentation to former leader Des O'Malley, attending his last conference as a parliamentarian and introductions for the new candidates McDowell, Parlon and Councillor Kate Walsh, running in Kildare North.
A less buoyant and, it is predicted, more desperate occasion takes place next weekend when 4,000 members of Fine Gael gather for its ardfheis at Citywest, Co Dublin. For the largest opposition party five years after a general election, the polls are bad and the time is short.
FG needs to enthuse its troops for the campaign and convince them that the fight is still winnable. The strategists are still working on how to do this and how to come out of next weekend better rather than worse. To this end, a countrywide poster campaign will be launched on Monday; the central theme is to point out the Government's failures.
Charles keen to visit the Burren
A decision is to be taken on Monday on whether the planned visit by Prince Charles to Dublin and Co Clare on Thursday and Friday will go ahead.
The trip, his second to the Republic, was put on hold when details leaked last month and fears for his safety arose. The British authorities are considering cancelling the visit, which is seen as furthering the normalisation of relations between the UK and the Republic, which started on his 1995 trip.
It is understood, however, the Prince of Wales, an enthusiastic environmentalist, is anxious to see the Burren and still wants to come. Following further consultations this weekend between the police in Britain, the Garda and Prince Charles's personal security team, a decision will be taken on Monday on the advisability of the visit.
Romance is in the air
The polls may be looking good for Bertie Ahern but whatever the result of the election, he is set to lose a substantial portion of his kitchen cabinet. Martin Mansergh, his adviser on the North is likely to secure a nomination for Tipperary South on Monday night and senior Government sources say that if he fails to win a seat, Mansergh can count on a Seanad nomination.
The Taoiseach will also be saying goodbye to his special adviser on social exclusion. Peter MacDonagh (grand nephew of 1916 Proclamation signatory, Thomas MacDonagh) has told friends he will be moving to the Czech Republic immediately after the election, as he recently became engaged to Monika Pajerova, a prominent figure in the 1989 revolution and a leader of a new political party close to Vaclav Havel. They are to marry later this year.
Exotic Hillsborough
Could it be what Churchill called the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone and the endless quarrel that drives some of those sent to Northern Ireland in the line of duty to take up with exotic partners from sunnier climes. This week, Northern Secretary John Reid announced his forthcoming marriage to Brazilian Carine Adler. The last secretary of state, Peter Mandelson, whom some in new Labour suspect will be rehabilitated by the new enquiry into the passport scandal and may return to power sooner rather than later, also had a partner from Brazil. He was one Reinaldo da Silva who appeared occasionally in the North and may be able to give Adler some advice on how to run Hillsborough Castle, the official residence, and how to deal with the strangeness of the Irish.
Reid is a Catholic widower and Adler is a divorcee who directs what are called sexually-explicit art-house movies. She is best known for the award-winning Under the Skin, the tale of a teenage nymphomaniac.
In an interview last year, Reid described the video she made of his election campaign: "It should be called Not the General Election. She managed to miss every conceivable important event and it became something of a joke between us. Carine is interested in emotions and relationship and feelings rather than being well-organised or Stalinist. So you could predict that when anything exciting happened, the camera had been forgotten, the battery had run down or the film was not there."
Stalinist? New Labour?
From Stormont to India
Last Friday, John Hume was awarded India's biggest honour - the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize - and spent eight days in the country, accompanied by Ambassador Philip McDonagh, talking on conflict resolution. He met many Irish religious working there and came away hugely impressed with their contribution.
In Sri Lanka, Hume had talks with President Chandrika Cumaratung, daughter of the famous Mrs Bandrianika. When she noticed the red button in his lapel denoting a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, she spoke in French. It was, McDonagh told Quidnunc, the greatest blow for French as a world language since John Knox conversed in French with Mary Queen of Scots. The meeting was in the old Colombo house of the island's governor and there was speculation among the participants as to whether Lady Gregory had lived there with her husband Sir William Gregory, governor of Ceylon.
At a reception for Hume in the ambassador's residence in Delhi, the British high commissioner Sir Rob Young and McDonagh agreed to appear in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in the spring, with the scenes moving between the British garden and the Irish residence.
Bringing Europe closer
Members of the Oireachtas, in a non-party sense, are seeking one of their number to fill the third Irish place at the great new European convention which opens in Brussels on March 1st. Under chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, it is designed to examine issues for the 2004 Inter Governmental Conference (IGC). The problem is they are looking for someone who will be re-elected here in May but will be freely available now for Europe meetings and won't spend all the time campaigning. It rules out many - Des O'Malley on the first criteria. The convention will be concerned with how the Union is moving forward and in bringing it closer to the people.
Each member-state sends three delegates - a government nominee and two elected parliamentarians - and there are delegates also from the candidates states, the Parliament and the Commission. An interim report is expected in time for the Barcelona summit in June.
The Government has already nominated former commissioner Ray MacSharry, whom one Eurocrat described as an excellent choice in that he knows the ropes and is considered a tough cookie. Fine Gael is putting forward John Bruton, former taoiseach, well-known Europhile and a vice-president of the Christian Democrats. A high-powered team, so far, likely to commandrespect at rough negotiations. However, a whips' meeting on Wednesday night failed to reach agreement on the third nominee.
The Greens and Sinn Féin, who have three TDs between them, want an anti-Nice person but the chances of that are nil and zero.
Nominations were supposed to be in Brussels by last Friday. Further whips' meetings are planned.
Castro castigation
The great and the good from Ireland gathered on Monday for a dinner hosted by the Smurfit Business School at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, as part of the World Economic Forum. Mark Durkan, Gerry Adams, David Ervine, Sean O hUiginn and Irish consul in New York, Eugene Hutchinson, were all there. David Trimble, who had attended the debate earlier on the peace process did not turn up. As the guests were leaving, Myles Ambrose, a well-known fundraiser for the Republican Party, loudly berated Adams for going to Cuba and letting the side down. "I had to make a judgment call," replied Adams.
On his US visit, Adams got a lot of stick from friend and foe, but mostly friend, and it is generally viewed that he greatly underestimated the amount of anti-Fidel Castro feeling among conservative supporters, long stalwarts of Sinn Féin and a united Ireland.