In fact they are worse than irrelevant, they are the wrong questions. There is an agerelated emergency in political life but it does not concern the senior girls. The age-related emergency is in the junior school.

The newspapers are beginning to say that it is the political turn of the Adrian Mole generation. Time for some new brooms to sweep the parliamentary world clean; to bring an end to the weary sectarian wrangling and double-speak that has dogged our public life for so long, and turn our faces towards the future. Unfortunately these newspapers are all British.

You can see how they might say this. The arrival of David Cameron, who is not yet 40, has made even Tony Blair look weary.

(Although Tony does not look one bit weary in his topless shot in Heat magazine's Torso Of The Year chart. Appropriately, Tony, caught by some enterprising paparrazzo whilst in his swimming togs, comes in at Number 10. Very nice he looks too. ) David Cameron is a relatively young man and, in political terms, is virtually a pre-schooler.

It seems that Sir Menzies Campbell's chances of succeeding Charles Kennedy as leader of the Liberal Democrats could be scuppered simply because Ming was born too early. In an article in the New Statesman the journalist Martin Bright, who happens to be a contemporary of Adrian Mole's himself, argues that his generation's moment has come. Men and women who were coming to political consciousness during the Miners' Strike and the Falklands War are now hitting the front benches of parliament.

Those of us who have always loved Adrian Mole . . . and that girl Bridget Jones owes him almost everything, diary-wise . . . are painfully aware that Adrian did not enter politics. It was Pandora, the love of his life, who became a New Labour MP. However we are prepared to see what Martin Bright means. It is time that the world steeled itself for leaders who are aged between 38 and 44 and three quarters. (I'm sorry, I do not seem to have a three quarters symbol on my typewriter. No wonder I'm the only person in Dublin South East who has not been offered a crack at the Fine Gael nomination. ) But you see, here's the thing. Where is the Adrian Mole generation in Irish political life?

Not one of our political leaders is under 50 years of age. There is nothing wrong with being 50, but there's a bit of a problem when absolutely all the leaders of an enterprise are 50, and looking rather fit and spry. It would be a brave person who suggested to our Taoiseach that he release his snapping turtle's grip on power in order to make way for a younger successor, but it would also be a blind person. Because where are the young men and women who are lining up to succeed Bertie? There simply are not any . . .or else we can't see them behind Brian Cowen.

The Adrian Mole generation . . . people in their late 30s and early 40s . . . are not out partying or collecting Asbos. They are the backbone of our economy, they are the people who make up our traffic jams and are at the rough end of the childcare debate.

They are the people bound to look after two generations . . . their children and, hopefully, their parents. They are the ones who are going to start vanishing in the pensions meltdown. They are the ones who are going to have to ride out the oil shortages and the environmental disasters that are coming down the dual carriageway as we speak.

Our Adrian Mole generation was the first to have access to a broader, mainly British, culture without having to go and live in Coventry to get it. Perhaps they are bored by our politics . . . not the first generation to be bored by them, but the first generation to have alternatives. The thing is, we need them. Mary O'Rourke is the least of our problems.