Lenihan laps up lady love
Sunday November 29 2009
Eat your heart out, Tom Jones. Women may throw their underwear and hotel room keys at the Welsh crooner when he performs on stage, but Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has gone one better. He's got Mna na hEireann flinging their money at him.
Hard to believe, I know, but apparently envelopes stuffed full of cash have been pouring into his office in Merrion Street, personally addressed to Brian, some even containing notes from female admirers encouraging him to keep up the good work.
"What good work?" his critics might well answer. This is a man, after all, who has appeared recently in a poll as one of Europe's worst finance ministers, a verdict which has most economics experts scratching their heads and wondering why the title is restricted only to Europe. Surely there couldn't be anyone more clueless in the other continents? You can't argue with the box office, though. So far Brian has received some €8,620 in cash, and you can buy a lot of raw garlic with money like that.
Better still, the country's unlikeliest pin-up could nip into Eason's and pick up a copy of Economics Made Simple to help him get a handle on what went wrong -- a particularly tricky job when you haven't got a clue what went right. The only problem is he probably doesn't get to keep the money for himself, so would have to fork out for any background reading out of his wages, and we know from recent revelations about expenses that Irish politicians are allergic to spending their own money. Let's just hope they have a copy in the Dail library.
As for what happens to the cash, that gets donated to a charity for the desperate, despairing and destitute. Or "Ireland", as it used to be called.
- Eilis O’Hanlon
Sunday Independent
