The presence of a new hotel, albeit a small one, will be very welcome to tourists. In case you are planning a visit soon, here are some facts about it. I heard about them from one of the hotel's public relations people.

"Situated in the heart of the village, " the PR man said on Thursday, "Hotel Doolin is built to four-star standard and has many unique features with the emphasis on comfort and luxury. It is part of a hotel village complex, which includes this beautiful boutiquestyle hotel with 17 deluxe bedrooms. It also incorporates the South Sound restaurant, Fitzpatrick's Bar, Cafe Sonas, a 60seater Banqueting Suite, Atrium Bar, retail outlets as well as outdoor terraces and a Tourist Information Bureau. This Euro5.5m investment project has been led by the directors, John Burke, Paddy Burke and Jim Shannon. These three men are to be heartily congratulated for taking this important initiative."

And so on, and so on.

This particular PR man deserves praise for getting the details of this hotel into a national newspaper. Public relations people often have a damnably difficult time getting journalists to talk to them, never mind getting details of their projects into the papers, so I think we should congratulate the person involved in succeeding where so many others have failed. So step right up, Bertie Ahern, and take a bow.

Yes folks, it's that Bertie Ahern I'm talking about, the one who runs the country, the one, with increasing bemusement, we call the Taoiseach. On Thursday afternoon, while 500 workers in the Pfizer factory in Cork were the subject of frantic efforts to save their jobs, while yet another garda cock-up manifested itself during an international investigation into child pornography, and while the Irish Times was preparing a report on the enormous carbon emissions caused by government ministers on often useless trips abroad and around the country, the Taoiseach was doing what he does best - enjoying a useless trip down the country to open a hotel.

Ahern's dedication to opening things has apparently become an addiction. He now seems to have more openings to advertise than Monster. ie. He would probably argue that this is how you win elections, going out and meeting the people, shaking their hands, opening their pubs, restaurants and hotels, being the man of the people, a carefully crafted selfimage which has worked so well for him during his years in politics.

The problem with this image, after 10 years of Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach, is that it has become a terrible cliché, and increasingly difficult to sustain, given Ahern's millionaire status. After a decade of Bertie Ahern as leader, something more than speeches about excellent bedrooms and Atrium Bars is required. The country is entering a potentially tricky period economically, as the difficulties at Pfizer and Motorola have shown recently. People would welcome, and be curious about, a political leader with the ability to articulate and respond to the problems they are confronting.

They would see him, I think, as preferable to somebody who sings the praises of boutique hotels.

Also on Thursday, while the Taoiseach was droolin' about Doolin, surrounded by various Fianna Fáil hacks, including the ludicrous Senator Timmy Dooley (who says he sleeps safer at night because the CIA flies into Shannon airport), Enda Kenny was making a speech at a school in Lucan, Co Dublin. In government, he said, Fine Gael would introduce a package of measures to help schools deal with immigration.

Amongst the proposals are improved training for teachers, English classes for the parents of foreign nationals, and the abolition of a rule that allows only two years of language support for foreign children, no matter how much help they might need. All schoolchildren are losing out because of a lack of resources to help new students, he said. "The current situation is that the international children lose out in terms of language and Irish children lose out in terms of curriculum."

Kenny's comments followed on from his "Celtic and Christian" speech of a few weeks ago, which contained much that was offensive, and much that was enlightened and thoughtful. The point is that Kenny - like the Labour Party with its Commitments For Change, and the Green Party generally - is thinking about the problems that confront the country and offering new ways of looking at them. You might agree with them or disagree with them (Fine Gael's approach to the crime problem is truly insane, for example), but at least they're coming up with ideas. And so, in fairness, is Michael McDowell.

From Fianna Fáil, however, we get nothing other than the pimping of pubs, clubs and hotels by the Taoiseach. When was the last time Bertie Ahern made a speech that contained a single new idea, or a vision of where he might take Ireland in the future were he to be re-elected as Taoiseach. Where, as the Americans say, is the beef? Ten consecutive years of power seem to have rendered him incapable of anything but platitude and cliché, convinced of his ability to win the election on the basis of his amiable personality.

And maybe he will be proved right on that. Perhaps he can win another election by avoiding debate, refusing to engage in issues, and articulating views that sound like they come from the copywriter who penned Thursday's oration on the Doolin Hotel. Or maybe, as our collective instinct tells us that the next 10 years will be a little more bumpy than the last 10, we'll look for leaders with the intelligence and curiosity to seek solutions for our problems.

At that point, the Taoiseach can plan his retirement, and some welldeserved rest and relaxation after a lifetime of serving the people. I hear the Doolin Hotel is lovely at this time of year.