Politics should be about knowing when — and how — to apologise

AT first sight, it might not seem that Beverly Flynn and Martin Cullen have a lot in common. She’s from a dyed-in-the-wool Fianna Fáil family and he’s a political waverer.

Her political future is at an end and he's an ambitious minister of the Government.

But there the differences end. Both have cost the State millions, and both persist in the belief that the public should be grateful to them. Bev still thinks she should be Queen of the West, despite encouraging people to evade their taxes. And Cullen still thinks he is right, despite blowing millions of our euro on an electronic voting frolic.