Consensus dies on office floor as country looks into abyss

IN the dying minutes of their doomed leaders’ “consensus” meeting Eamon Gilmore leaned forward in his chair and asked the Taoiseach directly when he would go to the country.

Brian Cowen bluntly replied that he intended to cling to office until the final day he could.

The gathering broke-up shortly afterwards as consensus – a sickly political child whose heartbeat had barely flickered through the previous 135 minutes of discussion – lay stone-cold dead on the floor of the Taoiseach’s sumptuous office.