‘I took a long holiday and decided to step down as leader of the PDs’

IT’S said that the best way of getting a story out is to tell a politician a secret.

But Mary Harney’s announcement yesterday afternoon that she was stepping down as leader of the party came as a thunderbolt out of the blue to her Progressive Democrat colleagues and to the wider world.

She made the decision a week into her fortnight’s holiday in Italy and the only two people who knew were her husband, Brian Geoghegan, and two close friends.