Lie down with dogs and you'll get up with fleas.

On RTE radio yesterday, Michael McDowell, Minister for Justice, admitted he had his arm twisted by PD TD Mae Sexton to decentralise the headquarters of the Prison Service and its 158 staff to Longford town in her constituency.

Coupled with the decentralisation antics of her PD colleague Tom Parlon, this is further proof that the PDs are as capable of gombeen politics as their government allies Fianna Fail, with whom many of their members obviously swim in the same gene pool, at the shallow end.

The PDs like to see the current government arrangement as a coalition of the upright and the bent, evidenced by the behaviour, before the last election, of Michael McDowell when he urged voters to return the PDs to power with Fianna Fail, on the basis that Fianna Fail could not be trusted to govern on their own.

Well we’re now seeing the proof that power corrupts even PDs, and McDowell is learning the truth in the old adage that if you lie down with dogs you’ll get up with fleas.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner.