GOOD WEEK
Joe Schmidt: Last weekend's emphatic defeat of England at the Aviva offered the Ireland rugby coach a good degree of redemption to round out a topsy-turvy Six Nations campaign
Clerys workers: This week the workers who were treated so poorly in the sudden closure of the Dublin department store received some level of compensation from owner Natrium ahead of a redevelopment
BAD WEEK
Jeroen Dijsselbloem: The Eurogroup chair has been under pressure since his party took a hammering at the Dutch election, and this week he compounded his woes with an ill-advised dig at southern European nations that metaphorically spend all their "money on drinks and women and then ask for help"
Google: The search giant is under sustained fire with YouTube advertisers, as big brands realised that their ads were appearing alongside numerous videos by extremists and hate groups, prompting agencies to pull their ads from the site
GIVE ME A CRASH COURSE IN . . . ENDA KENNY
I see Enda is still the leader of Fine Gael. He sure is. The Taoiseach arrived back from Washington, DC, basking in the plaudits for his speech on immigration in front of Donald Trump. He told the Fine Gael parliamentary party that he would be attending the summit of European leaders to decide a position for the Brexit negotiations on April 29th. This means he will remain in office for longer than many people had thought. April 29th was the date that the rival leadership camps in Fine Gael had informally pencilled in as the date of the leadership election.
What are these rival leadership camps you speak of? Of course, there is no vacancy for the Fine Gael leadership, and therefore there are no leadership contenders and no rival camps. That's the official line. But everyone in Fine Gael knows that a leadership contest is under way, and it will ultimately be a choice between Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney. They have been preparing campaigns, drawing up lists, counting heads.
I thought Fine Gael was supposed to be gentlemanly. Up to a point. In the midst of the crisis back in February about the treatment of the Garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe both Varadkar and Coveney – along with others, including Minister for Health Simon Harris – told the parliamentary party that it needed to prepare for a general election. That was understood by everyone present as meaning that it needed to change its leader. In response the Taoiseach told the party that he would deal with the leadership issue "effectively and conclusively" when he returned from Washington. His intervention defused the emerging threat to his leadership. But in the US capital he said there were more important issues to deal with, such as the re-establishment of the Northern Ireland Executive and the preparations for the Brexit negotiations. These were his priorities, he said.
So did he deal with the leadership issue "effectively and conclusively"? Not really.
Where does that leave the leadership of the party? In his capable hands. There is a general acceptance within Fine Gael that the contest will not now take place until after he returns from the April 29th summit, and, by and large, TDs seem content to accept that. But most also say that the inevitable has been delayed, not deferred indefinitely. The Brexit negotiations will take at least two years, so there's no question of Kenny remaining as leader for anything like that length of time. Kenny himself is promising an "orderly transition" rather than "I fight on".
What's the new timetable? Fine Gaelers expect that the Taoiseach will announce his intention to step down once the EU has agreed its negotiating strategy for the Brexit talks with the UK. Kenny believes, with some justification, that his European experience and contacts put him in a strong position to ensure that Ireland's interests are strongly reflected in the European Commission's negotiating mandate. Of course, there's always the possibility of another summit in May or June.
And when will a new leader be in place? If the Taoiseach does as Fine Gaelers expect, the contest will take place in late May or early June, with a new party leader in place about three weeks after Kenny resigns. Subject to renewing the agreement with the Independents and with Fianna Fáil, the new Fine Gael leader will be elected taoiseach by the Dáil shortly afterwards. But that's an indicative timetable, not a definite one.
Enda is keeping them guessing, then Yep. But he would be wise not to push his luck, or his party, too far. The decision has been made to change leader. That will happen soon. The timing may have changed a bit, but not the conclusion. Pat Leahy, Political Editor
SOUNDBITES
"Throughout his life Martin showed great determination, dignity and humility, and it was no different during his short illness"
Gerry Adams pays tribute to his late Sinn Féin colleague Martin McGuinness
"I've been authorised by the department of justice to confirm that the FBI . . . is investigating . . . the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any co-ordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts"
FBI director James Comey drops a bombshell at the US Congress
"London is the greatest city in the world, and we stand together in the face of those who seek to harm us and destroy our way of life. Londoners will never be cowed by terrorism"
London mayor Sadiq Khan after the terror attack at Westminster
“We clearly had challenges with queuing on Saturday. When I was informed of this I made the decision to offer a refund to attendees who were outside and did not wish to queue further”
Gamercon organiser Ferdi Roberts on the fiasco that unfolded at Convention Centre Dublin last weekend
SEVEN DAYS: IN NUMBERS
5
Number of minutes it took for Electric Picnic to sell out after tickets went on sale on Thursday morning
15
Ireland’s place on the UN World Happiness Report, an index of national happiness that was topped by Norway
€75m
Amount that RTÉ hopes to raise by selling a section of its Montrose campus
€78m
Amount paid by lenders to 2,600 mortgage-account holders who were denied tracker rates over the past decade
16,000
Number of ESB customers who lost power because of the bad weather on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning
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5: Coast Guard's final salute to Capt Dara Fitzpatrick a hugely emotional crescendo to a hugely emotional funeral
6: At least 30 dead after air strike hits Syrian school
7: Tipperary boy gets stuck inside arcade machine
8: Bad sex scenes have played at a cinema near you
9: Derry City captain Ryan McBride found dead
10: House of Commons on lockdown after reported shooting
THE QUESTION: IS THE LAPTOP BAN REALLY A SAFETY MOVE?
On Tuesday the US government restricted the size of electronic devices that passengers could carry aboard flights to the United States from 10 airports in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and north Africa. For security reasons, it said, any gadget larger than a smartphone would have to be checked into the hold.
The move raised suspicions that this was related to the Trump administration’s travel ban on six Muslim-majority nations, an effort to inconvenience Islamic travellers rather than a genuine response to a security threat.
But within hours the UK followed suit, with a similar ban, implying that the measures were based on active intelligence. By Tuesday evening some reports suggested that the ban was prompted by intelligence gathered at the ill-fated raid on an al-Qaeda camp in Yemen in January, which may have confirmed that its bomb-making designs were sophisticated enough to disguise explosives in laptops, tablets or large cameras.
The US government did not confirm whether the ban was based on specific intelligence. Yet that the ban applied only to carry-on devices continued to raise questions about its basis: is a bomb in the hold not just as dangerous as one in the cabin?
Many commentators suspected an ulterior motive. The US-based academics Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman speculated in the Washington Post that the plans might be protectionist measures, a surreptitious way of targeting the Gulf airlines that have been the frequent target of complaints from their US counterparts about receiving unfair state subsidies.
Above all, though, the scepticism about the new measures indicates the degree to which the Trump administration has burned through any credibility it had on these issues. The laptop ban is a relatively small moment when the US president is asking for the world's trust, and the reaction shows that such trust is already in short supply. Davin O'Dwyer
GRAPHIC OF THE WEEK: DONALD TRUMP’S APPROVAL RATING
