Brief encounter with the Taoiseach

As I mentioned in my previous post, Forest's John Mallon was in Dublin today to launch the Forest Eireann Election Manifesto.

Irish voters go to the polls in ten days and we wanted to remind candidates that 800,000 voters in Ireland smoke.

We also wanted to draw people's attention to the fact that the tobacco tax increases being proposed by the leading parties in Ireland could cost smokers an extra €1,560 a year.

I can't pretend it was headline news but our message was reported by Newstalk (Ireland's national talk radio statin), TV3, Dublin 98FM, The Nationalist, Irish Examiner and various other media.

John arrived in Dublin from Cork last night and made his way to his hotel in Kildare Street, close to the Irish parliament.

On a previous visit he got out of his taxi in Kildare Street and bumped straight into the then health minister James Reilly.

Reilly is fiercely anti-smoking and John is fiercely opposed to Reilly's particular brand of nanny state politics, yet they had a brief convivial chat before going on their way.

This morning John had another brief encounter with a leading Irish politician. He was standing in Merrion Street, outside the Irish parliament, waiting to meet a photographer, when this happened:

So there I am looking across the road to the Dail when Enda himself saunters up behind me. It was a golden opportunity to confront the man regarding his five years of persecuting smokers but I took a look at him and saw a guy under serious pressure.

So I shot the breeze gently with him, even going so far as to wish him luck. I disagree fundamentally with his party on so many things but Forest is a freedom organisation so he and his colleagues are entitled to think and say as they wish. Civility costs nothing.

See: Smokers are voters too (John Mallon).

For those unfamiliar with Irish politics, this was no ordinary politician. Enda was Enda Kenny, Ireland's Taoiseach (prime minister).

Last night, by common consent, Kenny had a fairly disastrous time of it in the televised debate. Yet here he was, the following morning, strolling up the road to the Dail from his house a few hundred yards down the road and our man was able to greet him, shake his hand and wish him well.

Can you imagine that happening with David Cameron?

My only complaint is that had the Taoiseach turned up 15 minutes later we might have got a picture of him with our ad trailer in the background!