Lucinda alone as Enda reels in rebels

Though hardly at his most eloquent, Enda Kenny still spoke for most TDs when he declared: “I am going to get rid of it this evening.”

“It” was, of course, the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, or, as many weary TDs now view it: “The Life During Wartime Bill.”

A minister caught scurrying the long way around the side of Leinster House so he could slip in the back and thus avoid the anti-abortion protestors kneeling for the rosary at the front gates bemoaned: “I have had enough of them at home, I don’t need to run into them here as well.”