Publish the Nally report and prove your sincerity, Minister McDowell

PROFESSOR Niamh Brennan may feel vindicated. Her comment that she would be ‘reluctant’ to contact the gardaí if she was the victim of an assault, after news of her son’s mugging was leaked to The Star, has been followed within hours by another high-profile leak.

This time it’s about the Attorney General’s wife, and how the gallant gardaí acted quickly to restore her handbag after it had been snatched.

Timing, as they say, is everything. But Brennan should have kept her own counsel. To take a hypothetical situation as an example: a public figure shouldn’t say that, since some politicians are corrupt, people might as well not vote.