What’s going on up in the Áras Michael D?

Wherefore the halos, oh how they slip so lightly.

What’s going on up in the Áras? That question kept zipping around my head as I tucked into the porridge, one morning last week. Then, if the Áras wasn’t bad enough, I saw something that nearly killed me. Having devoured my copy of the Irish Examiner, I had turned to the Irish Times and came within a whisker of choking on oats. Buried deep in the “paper of record’s” letters page was a missive that sent me into convulsions of shock.

But, first, Michael D and the courtiers in the Park. It emerged last week that the President’s chief adviser, Mary van Lieshout, has left under circumstances that are far from clear. The Sunday Times reported that the issue was a tiff straight out of the royal court of an ancient European monarch. Apparently, the chief adviser was peeved that her access to the king, sorry, President, was impeded by a junior functionary wielding excessive power.