THE SAME Paul Kehoe found himself in some hot water at the start the month when he tweeted, “I wouldn’t trust Martin McGuinness to take my dog for a walk.” He followed up with a tweet about the £26.5 million (€31.35 million) IRA robbery of the Northern Bank in 2004.

“Why would you need your salary when you have the proceeds of the northern bank at your disposal?” The Chief Whip then, er, stood by his tweets.

He sent them while travelling to a function in the west with party colleague Eoghan Murphy, FG deputy for Dublin South East. Or did he? Eoghan departed shortly afterwards for an OECD conference in Dubrovnik. While there, he heard he had been identified as the tweeter. Kehoe was his passenger on that Sunday morning drive west, catching up on some sleep while his phone rested on the dashboard.

Deputy Murphy, it was claimed, composed the tweets and sent them while Paul was snoring.

Stranded in Croatia, Eoghan was horrified. His colleagues urged him to come clean as the Chief Whip was covering up for him and it wasn’t fair. As a lowly backbencher, maybe he should come out with his hands up. And anyway, the media was already sniffing around.

A distraught deputy Murphy refused to take a hit for the team.

His fellow TDs waited until he returned home to break the news that they’d made it up.