Bailey, a TD (member of parliament) from Ireland’s ruling Fine Gael party, was on a night out with friends in the bar of Dublin’s Dean hotel in July 2015. The bar had a swing which Bailey sat on it while apparently clutching a beer in one hand and a friend’s wine bottle in another. Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael, a pro-business party, has promised to rein in the phenomenon. Bailey, a 43-year-old mother of two children, who represents an affluent south Dublin constituency, had complained that the swing was “unsupervised”. Fine Gael candidates blamed a disappointing showing in Friday’s local elections partly on the perception of party hypocrisy.

Source: The Guardian May 28, 2019 17:39 UTC