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Updated 10.53am
YOU KNOW THE latest viral craze has jumped the shark when politicians get involved and so it is the case with the ice bucket challenge.
Or in Tipperary South TD Mattie McGrath’s case it’s the ice digger challenge as he got a JCB to tip water over him, taking the craze to new extremes.
McGrath also nominated several local political colleagues as well as Children’s Minister James Reilly and the Kerry South TD Michael Healy Rae.
He isn’t the first politician to get involved in the initiative with Labour TD Ciara Conway taking the challenge last week and nominating a number of her Dáil colleagues:
Her Labour colleague Michael McCarthy has also taken up the challenge and nominated, among others, the Fine Gael TD Helen McEntee:
Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins says he’s done the ice bucket challenge but we’ve yet to see the proof:
Niall Collins / TwitterJust completed my #IceBucketChallenge I've nominated @willieodeaLIVE @AlanEnglish9 & Joe Nash @LimerickToday Best of luck.@IMNDA
— Niall Collins (@NiallCollinsTD) August 24, 2014
Here is the proof that one of Collins’s nominees, Willie O’Dea, took a soaking this morning:
Willie O'Dea / Twitter#IceBucketChallenge completed @NiallCollinsTD @AlanEnglish9 @CllrCathalCrowe. I nominate Cllrs Crowley & O'Hanlon pic.twitter.com/84nxN492SV
— Willie O'Dea (@willieodeaLIVE) August 26, 2014
While Labour’s John Lyons says his mum did it though he had a few technical problems uploading the video:
John Lyons TD / TwitterI can't believe my mother just did an ice nomination- absolutely hilarious and not sure whether to post it. Any thoughts?
— John Lyons (@JohnLyons77) August 21, 2014
So far the initiative, which has taken the western world by storm, has raised some €680,000 for the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association with some shops in Ireland literally running out of ice.
First published 10.02am
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Willie O Deas tache would absorb most of the water before it got the ground!
Fair play to you Mattie 10 out of 10
Not like Mattie to jump on a bandwagon.
He knows “many people” with mnd… really mattie, you know many people with a very rare disease?
Good cause but just stating this blatant lie !!!!
Just in the last 5 years in the Dáil, one TD has died from it and at least one other has it, not sure if they have died as well from it.
So in a work room of just 166 people he knows 2.
Using a digger isn’t the safest. So much for farm safety .
Yeah. One bloke in his boxers – lost said boxers when the water was dumped!
What has farm safety to do this.
It could be a council workyyars, a constriction company, anything.
One of the main causes of mechanical failure is dodgy hydrolic hoses. I know of 2 men in my locality killed in the last ten years by them failing. One lad was killed when the front loader on a JCB came down on him. The other when a trailor he was tipping came down.
Look most of us who have worked on farms have done stupid things. Mattys actions were ill judged considering he knew it would go public.Machines like this are not toys and he being a country TD should be aware of the dangers of promoting this kind of dumb act.
Too many dead on farms already this year.
Ah sure Feck it ,
what else would they be doing…
Fair play to Irish water for sponsoring everyone in the Dail who does the ice bucket nomination challenge. ..
Someone should have dropped the bucket on his head.
A bucket of piss would be the appropriate….
My husband had an accident involving a loading shovel and an extremely experienced driver. I find the direction the ice bucket challenges are going in frightening and dangerous. I might sound like a bore but I beg people to put away the machines there just too dangerous
Unnecessarily wasting this amount of ice is killing the planet.
Yes keep up the raising of money to donate to ALS and MND.ie, both organisations extensively carry out cruel unnecessary experiments on animals. Of could if people researched a little, they’d realise that there are companies that research Motor Neuron disease but instead of causing pain and fear to animals, use non animal laboratory synthetic cells. Oh but it’s much easier to follow the crowd in what is ‘pack mentality’ at its finest. Try researching companies such as : http://www.drhadwentrust.org/home/home
The ice bucket challenge is a bit of fun. That’s just too serious.
As Mattie says himself ” Who’s funeral is this anyway”.
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