Donie tries to get Brian out of the rough

After a legion of senators raised the issue of Taoiseach Brian Cowen's golf game with Seánie FitzPatrick in the Seanad, during Thursday morning's order of business, Seanad leader and seasoned golfer Donie Cassidy defended Cowen.

"I play a great deal of golf," he said. "I have not had the opportunity to play much during the past 12 months as a result of the demands placed on my time by the affairs of the state. If someone spoke to me about business while we were on a golf course, I would never play a round with him or her again…"

Donie neglected to say that it was during the last 12 months that he was at the centre of a major controversy for closing the upper house for business while he was on a four-day all-expenses-paid trip, staying in a five-star hotel, to play golf in Turkey with parliamentarians from around the world.

At the time, he even claimed: "I gave up my whole bloody weekend in the name of Ireland."

DUP's 'Peadar' Robinson a victim of cyber attack

Fine Gael was not the only political party to fall victim to a cyber attack last week. The DUP's website was also attacked by hackers on Wednesday.

A hacker calling himself Hector O'Hackatdawn attacked the party's website, as well as Jeffrey Donaldson's and Peter Robinson's individual sites. The message on Robinson's homepage was changed to read: "As Gaeilge Anois: Is mise Peadar Robinson agus tugaim tacaíocht don Acht na Gaeilge. Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam." meaning "Now in Irish. My name is Peter Robinson and I support the Irish Language Act. A country without a language is a country without a soul."

O'Hackatdawn described himself as "a computer science graduate, Irish language activist and political hacker" and said his motivation was to "highlight the nonsensical agenda against the Irish language by the DUP".

A new chapter in the gospel of St Luke's

Fianna Fáil's Dublin Central constituency office at St Luke's in Drumcondra has been the home of Bertie Ahern's political machine since the 1980s. But as the godfather of the Drumcondra mafia will not contest the general election, a lot is riding on Cyprian Brady's shoulders.

Brady famously won a Dáil seat on Ahern's coat-tails in 2007 even though he received only 939 first-preference votes. However, councillor Mary Fitzpatrick, who was shafted by the mafia several times, is Brady's running mate and has a better chance of winning a seat than he has of holding it.

If Fitzpatrick is the sole FF TD in the constituency after the election, the 'godfather' will have to swallow the bitter pill of passing the keys of St Luke's to 'Mary Fitz'.