From the archive: Golden Nanny Awards

On this day three years ago Forest hosted a special 'Farewell to Freedom' dinner in Dublin.

Inspired by our annual Freedom Dinner in London, the event took place at Suesey Street restaurant (above) and was attended by 60 invited guests.

It included the inaugural Golden Nanny Awards, the nominees for which included politicians, journalists and various nanny state campaign groups.

Highlight of a wonderful evening was the presentation of the 'Nanny-in-Chief' award to Senator Catherine Noone (below).

According to Keith Redmond, co-founder of the Hibernia Forum think tank, who presented the award:

"Our overall winner stands out even in a country that has so many politicians with a nanny state instinct. Senator Noone has gone above and beyond the rest, raising eyebrows even among her nanny state colleagues.

"She not only supports headline grabbing policies like minimum pricing of alcohol, the booze burka, and plain packaging of tobacco. She has also advocated bans on fast food outlets, proposed a ban on price promotions for chocolate biscuits and even wanted to ban chimes on ice cream vans."

Remarkably, Catherine not only accepted her prize in person, she charmed even her biggest critics, one of whom (journalist Ian O'Doherty) was on the same table and sitting right next to her!

She later tweeted, "Proud recipient of the Golden Nanny Award 2017 – proud moment."

Full story: Libertarians, contrarians, barbarians ... the Golden Nanny Awards 2017.