Fine Gael's launch of its "zero delay" traffic policy for Dublin was truly the press trip from hell. Hacks assembled outside Leinster House at 7.30 a.m. last Monday to be conveyed in a doubledecker bus to Swords and then back into the city centre in rush-hour traffic. Party leader, John Bruton, boarded in Swords with Philip Jenkinson, the Dublin North candidate, and deputy leader Nora Owen. They had already been out canvassing bleary-eyed commuters at Malahide railway station.
Jenkinson warmed to his theme as the specially hired bus rolled onto the Swords bypass. It would show the "journey through hell" which was faced every day by many of his constituents.
FG's transport spokesman, Ivan Yates, used a different metaphor. The party's new policy document, he said, was being delivered "on the hoof". Obviously, he hasn't recovered from the two-and-a-half years as Minister for Agriculture.
A Fine Gael lectern was set up at the front of the upper deck, although Olivia Mitchell, spokeswoman on Dublin traffic, confessed that it was "difficult to deliver a weighty policy document with any dignity from this position". When the bus ground to a sudden halt behind a juggernaut she was nearly thrown through the window. A good thing Alan Dukes is no longer the transport spokesman - he wouldn't have had standing room at all.
Trundling into the city centre nearly an hour after leaving Swords, with Senator Therese Ridge declaring that these were "the most moving speeches" she had heard for a long time, it was announced that all FG TDs and senators were to try out public transport for a week.
That should teach them a thing or two. Watch this space.