Six years back on the Late Late Show, Eamon Gilmore - unwilling to commit to rolling back austerity measures - loftily announced that the 'politics of promises are over.'
But it turns out the politics of promises hadn't even begun to start. And they have reached their apogee in this campaign in Mayo.
In a county where every second person seems to be a Fine Gael TD, Sinn Féin's Rose Conway Walsh is attempting to muscle her way into Dáil Eireann.
The bookies have her in a three-way battle with Fine Gael's Michelle Mulherin and Fianna Fáil's Lisa Chambers for the final seat.
And in this campaign, she has shown she knows how to tug at the heartstrings of her constituents. What do Mayo people want? Aside from health and education and crime and all those other irrelevant fripperies? We know what they want.
The alleged 'All-Ireland champions in whingeing' want an All-Ireland in something else.
In 'promising' that her elevation to the Dáil will make a Mayo All-Ireland win more likely, she has hit us with quite a stat.
However, in her excitement, she has fallen foul of the fact-checkers. It would be truer to say that no county had won an All-Ireland without a Sinn Fein candidate in five years.
When Cork squeezed past Down in the 2010 final, they somehow did so without the inspirational presence of a Sinn Féin TD in the county - though two were returned at the subsequent election five months later.
Mayo #PeoplesDebate 10pm tonight – @conwaywalsh will be on @TonightWithVinB @TV3Ireland #GE16 #BetterWithSF pic.twitter.com/BuwY3HRYIr
— An Phoblacht (@An_Phoblacht) February 22, 2016
In omitting Cork, Rose and her team may have bolstered our contention that their 2010 success is one of the most oft-forgotten triumph of the twenty-first century.
