Life and liberty

I’ve been in Ireland this week.

First port of call was Cork where I met up with Forest Ireland’s John Mallon for our annual review of the year, followed by a pre-Christmas dinner at the appropriately named Liberty Grill (above).

Curiously, apart from the Budget, which saw another increase in the tax on tobacco, and John’s annual tour of the country’s regional radio stations - during which he called for an end to the war on smokers - the issue that generated most coverage for Forest Ireland in 2019 was our response to a demand by Senator James Reilly for a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes.

The former Fine Gael minister of health has been a thorn in our side (and us in his!) for several years. Indeed, of all the anti-smoking zealots we’ve come across in Ireland, Senator Reilly is still the most prominent.

Having campaigned successfully for plain packaging of tobacco he then demanded a ban on smoking in al fresco dining areas and although that threat is currently on hold we’re under no illusions that it could be resuscitated at any time, a bit like Reilly’s political career.

Recently he has been attempting to regain the seat in the Dail that he lost in 2016. The Dublin Fingal by-election took place on Friday and if Reilly gets re-elected it’s a good bet he would be even more insufferable.

Thankfully that doesn’t look like happening. One early report put his share of the vote at 13.4 per cent, in fourth place behind Green Party candidate Joe O’Brien on 24 per cent, Senator Lorraine Clifford Lee (Fianna Fáil) on 16.2 per cent, and Labour’s Duncan Smith on 16.4 per cent.

Clifford Lee was the early favourite but social media was her undoing after it emerged she had posted derogatory comments - several years ago - about travellers and Kim Kardashian whom she accused of having a “fat arse”.

Reports that Reilly might benefit from the furore don’t seem to be playing out but we’ll know when all the ballot papers have been counted. I’ll keep you posted.

Update: I’d forgotten that in Ireland they use proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PV-STV) system so there are a number of counts as the candidate who is last drops out and his or her votes are allocated according to voters’ second, third, fourth etc choices.

Thanks to Tom Gleeson for providing this link to the live count.

Below: With John Mallon (far left) outside the Liberty Grill in Cork