Normally, when people go on the Joe Duffy Show, they are angry.  Many of them have a right to be angry and this is their way of getting it off their chest.

Catherine Byrne, showing the rigorous intellectual discipline that we have come to expect from the overpaid buffoons of our government, went on Joe Duffy today and announced:

“I’m not going to debate this issue on public radio, but I will say that I’ve been in touch with the proper authorities over these vile comments made against my family.”

In other words:

“I’m on your show but I don’t want to talk, Joe.”

That has to be a first.

She did manage to get a scary threat in against anyone who has said anything negative about her.  Good luck with that.

Catherine Byrne does an Enda Kenny:  they both want the media to play along with them but don’t want any hard questions.  Maybe we should have given her a few scones to bake, like morning TV did with Kenny a few weeks ago.  And come to think of it, she has a degree or something in boiling eggs, doesn’t she?

Well, I have a soft question to ask Catherine –soft in that it is YES or NO — and it concerns the rumours about her daughter at the weekend. I myself don’t approve of false allegations flying around the internet; so I think that it is only fair that Catherine gets the chance to say clearly that these are lies.

It was alleged that Catherine’s daughter Clare was awarded social housing around the time that her mother became a councilor.

It was also alleged that Clare and her husband afterwards inherited a house and now rent out the one awarded, which is apparently illegal under the social housing contract.

That’s it as I understand it.

So it’s a straightforward YES or NO.  If this is a malicious rumour then Catherine has every right to be upset. So would I be.  And she has the right to tell us unequivocally that her daughter has been wronged.

So there you go; not too difficult.

Catherine has also performed what we in Galway call ‘doing a Lorraine Higgins’.  This is when you are pretty much useless as a TD or Senator, land on slippery ground and find that it’s always a safe call to accuse the social media or bloggers like myself of ‘bullying’.  It takes the spotlight off you.  In theory, anyway.  (In reality it just makes you look like a prat who isn’t really tough enough for politics.)

After all, the mainstream media has to a large extent been brought into line; it’s now well past time to also put a stop to free speech online.

The problem is that Catherine’s whining about her children being dragged into this rings a little hollow when we consider that she’s the one who did the actual dragging – you know, by telling us all that the sprogs are in negative equity and need a handout from her shopping trolley, which she’s filling up using part of her €90,000 a year wage (paid to her by us).  You know; that kind of thing.

“I will do as much as I can to protect them, as they are my flesh and blood.”

Well, here’s a tip:  stop talking about them in the Dail – and about your sister too, come to that.

And next time you’re on Joe – actually say something.