Down-to-earth duo late back to the party after Mayo summit

HIGH DRAMA on the Holy Reek recently when two Fine Gael deputies went missing on Croagh Patrick.

God forbid, but we nearly lost Dublin South’s Peter Mathews and Cavan’s Joe O’Reilly to the mists of Co Mayo.

Government TDs were on the verge of calling the emergency services after the two political veterans sallied up the mountain in the afternoon but failed to return by nightfall. Frantic attempts were made to contact them through their mobiles, but they weren’t answering.

When the Dáil resumed this week, Peter and Joe were greeted like returning polar explorers as word of their ordeal spread around Leinster House.

At the Fine Gael think-in in Westport, Taoiseach Enda Kenny challenged his troops to climb Croagh Patrick. Eight intrepid mountaineers set out in the afternoon and completed the round trip in three hours, meeting their boss’s target of a 90-minute hike to the summit.

Peter and Joe proceeded at a far more leisurely pace. The advance party, led by Government Chief Whip Paul Kehoe with TDs Martin Hayden, Patrick O’Donovan, Andrew Doyle, Brian Walsh, Alan Farrell and Senator Catherine Noone, passed the stately pair puffing their way up through driving rain as they were well into their descent. The younger crew handed over extra jackets to Mathews and O’Reilly, who insisted they were fine.

Kehoe and company returned to their lodgings in Westport, showered, changed and went downtown for dinner.

As darkness fell and the climbers were tucking into big juicy steaks, there was still no sign of Sir Edmund Mathews and Sherpa O’Reilly. At this stage, they had been gone for nearly seven hours. Patrick O’Donovan and Alan Farrell were dispatched to find them.

It was 9.30pm and pitch black when they arrived at Campbell’s fine public house at the foot of the reek, but the two weren’t inside. Joe O’Reilly’s car was still in the car park.

Farrell was in the process of ringing Kehoe for the relevant mountain rescue numbers when two soaked and bedraggled figures suddenly stumbled out of the swirling mist.

Poor Joe was rather disorientated and Peter had fallen and cracked a couple of ribs.

O’Donovan and Farrell wrapped them, took them back to the hotel and fed them hot soup.

Joe decided to sit out the rest of the night, but a rejuvenated Peter joined his colleagues later in Matt Molloy’s pub and regaled them with tales of his brave conquest of the reek and the parlous state of the economy.

All’s well that ends well, and the intrepid Mathews and O’Reilly have faithfully promised that the next time they find themselves stuck up a mountain, they won’t have their mobile phones on silent.