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FINANCE MINISTER MICHAEL Noonan has said he will never appear on a programme being hosted by Vincent Browne because he doesn’t like him.
Noonan has declined to give reasons for his dislike of the veteran presenter of the Tonight programme on TV3 in an interview with the Limerick Leader newspaper.
The Fine Gael TD is running for re-election in Limerick City next year and sat down with the paper’s editor Alan English to discuss the last four years, his political comeback and his future plans.
But it was Browne that got him particularly spiky after English raised The People’s Debate and Noonan’s refusal to appear on the programme when it came to Limerick recently.
Noonan said: “Vincent criticised me, but Vincent knew I wouldn’t go on his programme. I don’t like Vincent Browne and I don’t go on his programmes and I won’t go on his programmes.”
Asked to explain why, Noonan said he didn’t want to explain, adding: “I just don’t like the fella.”
I’m not going to get into that in any way whatsoever. But I mean, he comes up here, into Limerick, and he launches an attack on me for no good reason. Vincent would have known four years ago that I wouldn’t appear on his programme.
He added: “The position is that Vincent Browne could be running a programme all night from the Statue of Liberty and Michael Noonan will not go on.”
In the wide-ranging interview, Noonan said he was working on the assumption that the government will be returned to office and poured cold water on a Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil alliance.
“You’d be handing the country over to a Sinn Féin-led government, second time out. You’re teeing up a different model to what we’ve had since 1922,” he said.
I won’t be around for that one, obviously. But you’re teeing up a left-right model and I think Sinn Féin don’t pass the economic literacy test.
“Their experience in Northern Ireland is helping to run a public service and social welfare economy. I don’t think they have any idea how to run a private sector economy.”
He said he would like a country where the alternative to Fine Gael-led governments are Fianna Fáil-led governments.
The 72-year-old told the paper that he wants to be Finance Minister if the government is re-elected, saying he’d “more or less sorted out” the country after five Budgets.
“I’m after five budgets now and it’s for the public to judge, but from my perspective the country is more or less sorted out again now,” he said.
“The job now is to keep the recovery going – so I would like to spend another couple of years to make sure the recovery continues to go forward.”
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Some neck on these two.
@The Viking: I guess if you were in their situation and facing years in prison we all chance your arm at anything.
The arrogance of these people is hard for me to take. It’s obvious there guilty
@Paul O Riordan: They didn’t offer any real defence in court as they knew it would be ripped apart by the prosecution.
I have to say I was shocked to see the jury members say what they were saying on the TV. I thought there would be some sort of instruction not to speak to the media about their jury duty.
@Paul Mc Nulty: it’s certainly not the way things are done here. But apparently the judge would have needed to issue the jurors with a gag order, which he didn’t.
@Donnachaín Ní Uallacháin: or issue the media with an order not to harass jurors in any trial. The media is at fault here not the jury. Media are supposed to be professional the jurors are lay people not used to dealing with the law or madia outlets.
I just hope the conviction is upheld but if a new trial is called i hope they are convicted of murder 1
I had several issues with the claims of the two. The number of blows, time elapsed before calling for aid, and her rubbing at her neck during police custody. Additionally, if my father were in the position of hers, he would come to my defence with fists, not a bat. He would be up and running, not stopping for a weapon.
@Rathminder: also telling is the fact that he told police that he woke to hear them arguing and stomping around upstairs and he went up with the intention of telling them to ‘knock it off’. Why would he bring a baseball bat to do that? And he was still wearing his watch which is unusual as most people would take their watch off before going to bed. Unless he stopped to put it back on again before going for the baseball bat.
As he is a former member of the FBI, i would have thought he would have been able to commit, cover up and justify the murder in a more professional manner
@Anne Marie Devlin: He may not have been very good at his job. The police said the crime scene was altered.
It was obvious that Molly Martens was told to wear loose-fitting dresses, flat shoes and a ponytail to portray the small, innocent schoolgirl look. They tried to portray Jason Corbett as a big, violent Irish lout. They banked too heavily on the typical Irish stereotype. I think it would have been prudent for the judge to issue a gag order in this case because this pair will stop at nothing. They just can’t accept the fact that they are not above the law.
So two murderers are putting their faith in a technicality to get off.
@Niallers: Unfortunately it is often more thsn enough to get away with murder.
US attorneys go out of their way to tell their clients how to look and act, and pick jurors based on their estimates of their prejudices based on age, gender and background.
When their sociopath clients show no remorse in the courtroom they then complain that the same jurors judged their clients based on prejudice against sociopaths.
As much as I like hearing jurors talk about their cases after the fact, they should have some advice from judges about how to phrase any statements so as not to leave open doors to appeal from public statements.
I don’t think the jurors were swayed by outside influences.
More like the the fact that they were bloody guilty!
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