Opposition finds Boylan’s victory hard to swallow

There is a certain irony in the fact that Lynn Boylan is chair of the Safe Food Advisory Board because her performance in the Dublin Euro elections proved hard for many to swallow.

The unknown quantity, the mystery woman, the twice-failed Kerry South and Killarney election candidate, she of zero political experience, was off to Europe as easy as if she was stepping on a bus leaving seasoned campaigners looking like they’d just scaled Croagh Patrick barefoot.

She called herself an ecologist. She called herself a feminist. She called herself Ni Bhaoighealláin before she decided to stand in Dublin and Anglicised her surname in a move that in one fell swoop elevated her from seventh to first place on the alphabetically ordered ballot sheet.