That’s Ireland

On this week last year (September 17 to September 23, 2006):

• A thirty-year-old conman from Roscommon, who was wanted on both sides of the Irish border for various crimes including car theft by impersonating a police officer, was in the news for what reason?
• Who anounced that he would not be inviting his friends Bill Clinton or Nelson Mandela to his wedding in Fermoy, County Cork?
• What Irish personality was accused in Court of ‘ranting and raving’ at a drunk lorry driver that he had ‘made shit’ of his driveway with a waste skip?
  
• The OECD ranked eighteen mostly European countries on how good they were at giving parental leave to workers. Where did Ireland rank?
• A report showed that, unsurprisingly, Irish people are more overweight now than in 1948. But how many calories per day did we consume in 1948 and 2006?

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Answers

• Frank Shanley rang up RTE’s Liveline show to tell Joe Duffy that he wanted to give himself up. As another of his cons, he pretended to be a film producer and hired a camera crew to film him enjoying himself in nightclubs.
• Michael Flatley.
• Michael McDowell, then Minister for Justice. The lorry driver was fined €800 and banned from driving for a year.
• Ireland was last. Sweden was first.
• We consumed just over 3,000 calories a day in 1948, and just over 2,000 calories a day in 2006. However, in 1948, we did more manual work, and we got more calories from carbohydrates and less from fats and proteins.