Michael and Paschal are sweetie kings of this Sweet Shop island!

I DON’T know how Michael and Paschal are going to get a wink of sleep between now and Budget day. 

With unprecedented surpluses on offer and an election to come next year, they are in the impossible situation of trying to be prudent in a time of apparent plenty. 

It’s like trying to keep a lid on your children’s demands for sweeties while being in the rather unfortunate position of living in a massive sweet shop in the middle of Sweet Shop Island.

The temptation to just drop a mountain of cash into the Bog of Allen and let everyone rip must be very real.

On the other hand, the temptation to shove all €16bn into some long-term investment plan so some eejit doesn’t try to pump it all into the children’s hospital must be equally strong.

Can you imagine what it will be like for them in the weeks ahead?

Invest in housebuilding, Paschal! Put the money aside for the rainy days to come as well, Michael! 

Invest in wave energy! And wind energy! And solar! And pay the farmers to put solar panels on the land we are already paying them to set aside. Invest in Ardnacrusha 2.0! Let’s go nuclear while we’re at it! 

Fix the potholes on the road outside my house in Ardfield! They can be seen from space and this is not a good look for what’s supposed to be The Gateway To Europe!

Send a million guards into Dublin City Centre and give every single Yank individual armed protection from the little gurriers as they queue for fries in Supermacs! 

Invest in the little gurriers too – if they had more playgrounds maybe they wouldn’t be trying to beat all the tourists to death! 

Invest in women’s soccer – how are we supposed to compete on the world stage when the players aren’t being properly looked after? 

And if the soccer crowd can get it, surely the GAA should get it too? Double the price of GAAGo and pump the funds into the national game, which is a central part of our community and sporting life! 

Invest in RTÉ. Take the €150K back off Tubbers and invest heavily in more Tubbers! Go big or go home!

Give every man, woman and child in Ireland a barter account! Sure give them two while you’re at it! Cancel the TV licence – we’re sick of hiding behind the couch for half the year. 

Invest in education. Give every child in Ireland a whole classroom to themselves like the Scandinavians. And how dare you question my research. I read about it on an Instagram reel set to inspirational music by Sigur Rós – so it must be true! 

Invest in the roads! And in the trains! And in the greenways! And don’t you even think about banning short haul flights from Kerry to Dublin! Sure the environment will heal itself if we throw enough money at it. 

Feck the begrudgers that crowed about Marty having to give up his RTÉ car. Clone 10  Marties and give them 10 cars and send them out onto the highways and byways to bring joy to the plain people of Éireann!

Invest in the plain people of Éireann! Cut their taxes and increase their benefits! Help the people to deal with crippling inflation by flooding the place with extra cash which most definitely causes lots more inflation.

Invest in the health service! Let’s make universal healthcare a reality! Let’s go Dutch and take care of our people! Give them all a raise – the doctors, the nurses, the thousands of middle managers with clipboards who wander around the aisles doing … whatever it is they do all day …!

All I can say is … best of luck fellas. 

Don’t lose the glam, ladies!

THIS week it emerged that Aer Lingus can no longer order its female staff to wear high heels. I think most of us were shocked that this was still a practice anywhere. 

Like most men who grew up in rural Ireland, I have dressed up as Abba on at least a handful of occasions so I do have some insight here. Pounding West Cork dance floors in dodgy heels to Dancing Queen is hell. Working on long haul flights in heels several days a week has got to be even more excruciating. 

So this is definitely a welcome development. 

Having said that, I do remember a time when Aer Lingus air hostesses were the very epitome of glamour in Ireland. In this time of church-based repression, Ovaltine and generalised rain, it felt like these women were symbols of a more affluent and independent age. 

Strutting their stuff across the runway tarmac with their perms vibrating in the jet stream. Their coveted duty-free perfume would leave a scent that would go on for weeks. They were seriously cool.

So while I risk exposing myself as some sort of misogynistic dinosaur here – a part of me hopes Aer Lingus doesn’t lose that sense of class, that sense of old-world glamour, with which some of us associate them. 

Cabin staff with budget airlines (who I shall definitely not name for legal reasons) hardly give you that sense of assurance or project that quiet and calm authority. You always had a sense with Aer Lingus air hostesses, wherever you were flying from, that you were very much home the minute you got on the plane and that even if these badasses did spend a good hour on their make-up routine, they’d have no problem landing a jetliner or getting a terrorist in an inescapable headlock should the situation require it.

Gotta hand it to Hannah

AND if anyone needed further proof of what Irish women are really made of, you just needed to see Hannah Tyrell’s post-match interview after her victorious All-Ireland Final appearance with the Dubs on Sunday. 

There she was, receiving her POTM award and feeding her baby, seven weeks after giving birth. 

I’m not sure if I had even left the house seven weeks after either of our kids were born, and I was hardly a central component to the delivery. 

If a male footballer so much as gave a baby a bottle after a game, he’d be landed with three book deals this side of Christmas to give a blow-by-blow account of his unending heroism. 

Not a bother on Hannah, though. She just takes it in her stride.

And the scary thing is that these Dubs just keep reproducing.