NOW that the general election is over, all can be revealed. Ireland's best known bachelor is involved in a relationship.
His Kerry friends couldn't believe it at first, but it has been confirmed. At the tender old age of 26, Fungie, the Dingle dolphin, has finally fallen in love.
The object of his attention? Not one of the many women he has attracted to the fishing port over the years, but a spunky young bottlenose with particularly feminine flippers.
The sensuous cetacean is believed to have breezed into Dingle Bay some time in the past month, along with visiting minke whales, according to the port's rare fish expert, Mr Kevin Flannery.
"Pods of dolphins have swum into Dingle many times, and Fungie has had many offers which he has never taken up," Mr Flannery told The Irish Times. However, the very sociable aquatic mammal appears to have at last abandoned the celibate life. "He can only have fallen in love."
To date, no diver has got close enough to examine her teeth, so the siren's age is uncertain. "She's paler than Fungie and she is not as interactive with the tourist boats, but that is probably because she is not used to human encounters," Mr Flannery explained.
Fungie, by contrast, has spent most of his 26 years in the Kerry port, living off cuttlefish, squid and other rich pickings and spawning a healthy tourist trade ashore.
The danger now is that the young female may woo Fungie away. "It's what often happens when they mate up. They move off," Mr Flannery said. Adult dolphins mate between spring and late autumn, and have calves every second year. As the average life span of the adult male is between 30 and 40 years, Fungie may not hang around.
Largely through Mr Flannery's influence, Dingle did make contingency plans for this some time ago. The Department of the Marine's fish quality officer and rare fish expert is also a founder and director of Mara Beo, the port's highly successful aquarium.
The aquarium is a showcase for almost everything that swims in the north Atlantic, including some rare visitors encountered in Gulf Stream waters by the local fishing fleet. Among its exhibits are squid and octopus, which are now believed to have intelligence to match that of humans ... and dolphins, of course.
