A chance to grow into the job
So, they appear to have left Willie O'Dea and Seamus Brennan in charge of the country for the weekend.
Now, no one is suggesting there's anything wrong with that, and, indeed, Willie O'Dea and Seamus Brennan are two of the finest and most popular politicians in the country. But you wouldn't exactly call either of them lanky would you?
And while none of us has anything against short men, they can tend to be just a little bit angry. And it's not that Willie O'Dea and Seamus Brennan have anything to prove to anyone, both of them having an admirable list of achievements to their credit, but no matter how much wealth and renown they achieve short men can still feel they have something to prove.
Short men have always argued, quite angrily in my experience, that "short-man syndrome" or "Napoleon syndrome", doesn't exist. But, last week, scientists proved that short men are indeed more jealous lovers than their taller brethren. I'm not suggesting that us tall men have any more reason to be confident as lovers than short men do, but clearly short men seem to feel a certain insecurity in the bedroom, romance and mating department. You could say they have a short fuse.
This small-man syndrome is generally fairly harmless and seems to involve small men amassing lots of money, having very tall models on their arms, driving big, long black shiny cars and continually asking tall men "Are you looking at my bird?".
So, with all due respect, I just think we should maybe question whether putting two small men in charge of the country for the weekend is really a great idea.
Given the weekend that is in it, a weekend when drink tends to be taken, you have to be concerned that we're all going to come back on Tuesday to find ourselves invading the EU, on elephants possibly, because those continental guys were looking down on us, and possibly trying to steal our women as well.
But look, we're probably worrying unnecessarily. I can just picture Willie and Seamus keeping a calm eye on things for the weekend, sitting out on two rocking chairs on the porch with their guns laid across their laps, perhaps indulging in sporadic bouts of banjo duelling.
And if anyone tall comes along and tries to cause trouble, Willie can hop up on Seamus's shoulders and they can put a long trench coat around them, put on a deep voice and see off the intruder.
But personally, I think if we were going to consider leaving a small man in charge for the weekend, we should have considered that guy Gerry Hutch. I don't know if you saw him on TV the other night, but he's apparently a bastion of the local community who doesn't drink or smoke
He's had a hard time in the media because he made a mistake with his taxes years ago, but he seems like a capable pair of hands.
As he said himself, he was a victim of crime once. And what did he do? He called an ambulance for them.
Now he, short as he is, strikes me as a man with nothing to prove. And indeed, as a man against whom nothing has been proven.
