When Senator Sharon Keogan materialised among the fuel protesters on Dublin’s O’Connell Street on Saturday and positioned herself beside self-described leader James Geoghegan, her stream of consciousness wasn’t quite what people expect from a responsible public representative. Geoghegan’s tax judgments and convictions for egregious animal cruelty had been well aired by then, but Keogan’s disappointment was with the media for “demonising” him. “There’s not a businessman in this country that doesn’t owe the Revenue money. You have to get up early in the morning to owe the Revenue money ...”

The other striking thing about Keogan’s appearance was that here was a female whose presence served to highlight the otherwise eerie absence of women from the relentless clamour of men and their humungous pieces of machinery.

If social-media-driven protests are about vibe as opposed to fact, then the vibe of past week was the purest concentrate of mine-is-bigger-than-yours.

The extreme machismo element was introduced by Christopher Duffy, the self-appointed leader who had “the country by the balls” . “They’re talking an army all day but we told them, we have a bigger f**king army. They were talking about moving machines into Foynes port – we moved in machines twice as f**king big. It takes weight to move weight. So we’ll go wherever we want …”

Coalition suffers first major defection as Michael Healy-Rae........

© The Irish Times