Enda, the taoiseach who stole Christmas

The sound of Christmas choirs resounded around Leinster House yesterday but Enda Kenny was not interested in tenors, he was only after tenners — from child benefit payments to the neediest families in the State or anywhere else he could snatch them.

Enda, the taoiseach who stole Christmas, did not even join in the clapping when the Ceann Comhairle lit up the tree at the back of the Dáil, his hands firmly in his pockets safe from the cold — though the arctic blast of disapproval today’s budget that will burst his way should prove harder to escape.

It was a frosty occasion in all manner of senses as Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore arrived late and shook all the other party leaders’ hands, but not Enda’s.Surely just a slip-up, not a manifestation of the budget battered state of relations within the cut-happy Coalition?