“Do you want the 7 billion or do you not?” is what I remember from the debate about the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, and people ringing Joe Duffy: telling him that they had divided 7 billion euro into 4 million people and had come up with 1,750 euro per head; sending him their account number. The question about the 7 billion, whether we wanted the money or not, was the question to which Albert Reynolds, then Taoiseach or Irish Prime Minister, had reduced the whole debate about the treaty. Easy. This is how you win votes and referenda – Albert had the skill, later Irish leaders did not. On occasions, they had to put the question about European Treaties out a second time to the electorate before they got the desired response…. Albert Reynolds died last Thursday and with him a very different way to run the country. May he rest in peace.

Pádraig moved to his new ward today. Just one floor up. He was clearly not very comfortable with that change. It’ll take some time before he and us will get used to the new surroundings, the new regime, and this new nurses and doctors. In the old ward, we new everybody. We had arrived months before some of the nurses themselves had started to work on this ward. He was a bit better in the afternoon. And hungry. He had another of those 190g jars which he liked so much yesterday.

I visited two residences today where families and their brain injured children we had met and got to know over the past year. Although their children, all around thei mid-twenties to early thirties, are being looked after in residences, they spent a considerable number of hours with them to make sure they have company and are well looked after. Imagine if all of that work and all of this energy could be channeled into An Sail, for the good of everybody!

If you have ever been to Hamburg, and if you ever got the Aer Lingus flight, then yo know that I’ll have to get up just after midnight, just in a couple of hours.