Questions and Answers

It was incendiary stuff last night. Watch it here.

Oh and on the Week in Politics on Sunday, Vincent Browne made an ass of himself, in my humble opinion.

Even better was Michael Martin’s weird response to Sean O’Rourke’s question:

As someone who was at both events, in terms of the public response, how did Charlie Haughey’s funeral in North Dublin compare with that of Jack Lynch in Cork?

Prepare yourself for the waffle answer of the week:

MM: Well there’s obviously a different, different type of funeral involved in terms of the public reaction and so forth, it was a very impressive funeral I thought in terms of the content of the Mass itself and the liturgy, onto the music.

SOR: What about the public turnout?

MM: Well it would have been greater in the Cork context but you are talking about two different contexts … in terms of numbers and volume on the streets I would imagine…

SOR: Were you and your colleagues in cabinet somewhat taken aback by the numbers?

MM: No, not particularly. I mean it was a different type of funeral. What struck me about the one last … about Charlie Haughey’s funeral was the different types of people from different parts of the country. So for example I came across 4 people from Dingle, fishermen who actually on the day, or the evening before sorry, drove up from Dingle to be at the particular funeral. So he had a range of people making their way from all over the country to get there. The Jack Lynch, Jack Lynch was a huge popular hero across the country but particularly in Cork, because of course being the first Cork Taoiseach and outstanding politician and sportsman and so on like that.

It’s the context you see.

1 million people in Dublin, 1,200 people turn out for Haughey’s funeral.