‘I’m an ordinary person who likes to call a spade a spade’

“THIS is the fifty first state ... of the USA.”

The opening line of the 1980s anti-Thatcherite hit 'Heartlands' by the British rock band The The rang out across the Dáil.

It is not every day you get someone singing in the hallowed halls of Leinster House, so the sound did wake up the small number of TD's sitting in the chamber.