The Front Pages
Only one story and one man dominates the broadsheets today and you’ll know who we’re talking about, unless you’ve been living under a stone. The headlines:
‘Cowen drink-in: the inside story’ – the Irish Independent.
‘Cowen says FG claim against him new low for Irish politics: Taoiseach attempts damage limitation after interview’ – the Irish Times.
‘Cowen: I was not drunk’ – the Irish Examiner.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s excuse for sounding ‘halfway between drunk and hungover’ (the words of Fine Gael TD Simon Coveney’s Twitter post) on a Morning Ireland radio interview yesterday was that he gets a little hoarse in the morning. Amazingly, it had nothing to do with the fact that he was drinking, singing and telling yarns in the bar at the Ardilaun Hotel in Galway as the Fianna Fáil think-in came towards an end.
Cowen refuted the claims from Coveney and a comment from Fine Gael Finance spokesman Michael Noonan who said the Taoiseach’s interview was uninspiring.
Once he miraculously overcame his vocal problems yesterday afternoon, Cowen found his voice to brandish the claims made by some of the shadow government as “uncalled for†and a “new low for Irish politics†at a press conference, where he also attempted to joke about doing more early morning interviews.
