Our politicians are madly keen to meet the new most powerful man in the world, George W. Bush. Indeed, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, was in the White House yesterday presenting the shamrock. But Martin Cullen was ahead of them all. Above, on St Patrick's Day, 1998, in Austin, Texas, the OPW Minister gave the then governor, now US President, Waterford glass
The European Parliament in Strasbourg, despite the dreary debates and even drearier translation processes, can sometimes be a jolly place, particularly at Christmas and around St Patrick's Day. Wednesday evening was one such occasion when between 200 and 300 MEPs, Eurocrats, fonctionnaires, lobbyists, and even some media gathered for a tasting of Irish whiskey in the Bar des Chauffeurs, one of the many drinking spots off the corridors of the new building.
The occasion was organised jointly by FG's John Cushnahan and the UUP's Jim Nicholson, both of whom have major distilleries in their constituencies, Midleton and Bushmills respectively. The purpose was to seek opinion on which of four whiskeys - Bushmills, Black Bush, Powers or Jameson - should be sold in the Parliament's gift shop along with the Scotch and other goodies. The guests tasted blind from plastic cups and then voted. Irish Distillers, it appears, will not release the result for commercial reasons too complicated to detail. Many Irish turned up, including MEPs Gerry Collins, Mary Banotti and Proinsias De Rossa, lobbyist John Hume Jnr and the British, both Tory and Labour, were there in force.
Cushnahan himself did no tasting - he had to speak on the Sri Lankan elections immediately afterwards. But he knows what it's like anyway. One MEP who didn't show was Ian Paisley. Did he decline the invite or was he not on the list? He does, after all, refer to whiskey as the devil's buttermilk.