I DON’T know when I had cabbage like it. The right amount of firmness, so tasty it must have been grown on volcanic soil fertilised by contented, opinionated cattle and cooked in water from one of those ads where the water surges free off a mountain that had trapped it since antiquity.

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern yesterday conceded a bill clearing the way for 25,000 Irish illegals to become permanent residents of the United States may never “see the light of day”.