I was at the Green Party manifesto launch earlier. Present with a number of their new candidates were the parliamentary party John Gormley, Eamon Ryan, Mary White, Dan Boyle, Ciaran Cuffe. Not sure about Mark Dearey but the person whose absence surprised me was Paul Gogarty – the candidate from Dublin Mid West – he really didn’t have to travel far to be there.

Paul says he was busy canvassing (rather that busy with childcare responsibilities – all the twitter wits were suggesting that!) but I was curious about him being on the missing list for another reason. His tweets the last few days show that he’s trying to get people to vote for himself rather than his party and he tells us he even has his own manifesto although the Green Party banner is beside him, it’s all about Paul.