Sheepish grins as Fine Gael candidates skip shearing

In Russia, senior politicians demonstrate their virility by horse-riding bare-chested, shooting tigers, and annexing chunks of neighbouring states.

In Italy they amass billions in personal wealth and protect it with armies of young maidens in bikinis. In North Korea they use not particularly useful relatives for target practice.

Here, they shear sheep. Or at least they threaten to. For in what might possibly take the all-time speed record for the breaking of an election promise, three government ministers and their Euro candidate were supposed to relieve woolly creatures of their winter coats at the World Sheep Shearing Championships in Gorey but the much anticipated spectacle never materialised.