Leo and Simon go back to college

“A Friday morning 10am lecture?” tweeted one waggish colleague. “Dose.”

This was a lecture with a difference, however, as Boole 4 in UCC, the venue for thousands of inspiring/yawn-inducing lectures down the decades, was packed out to hear the Government’s 2040 vision for the country — a plan already bedevilled by accusations that it is a mix of the new and reheated, all spun in a blender by the much-maligned Strategic Communications Unit and given the Pravda treatment in the media.

The Taoiseach wasn’t having it. Queried about comments made by Public Accounts Committee member Shane Cassells, in which he referred to Leo Varadkar living in “some Russian creation” or “Trumpland” if he believed in “buying the news”, the Taoiseach said: “We all know what the opposition is at here, what they are trying to do is to distract from the plan.