It should be a Waterford Whispers headline but it's not. The Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions will today discuss whether to put Conor McGregor's face on the €1 coin. The UFC featherweight champion is a divisive figure in this fine country of ours so we will proceed from here in the most professional manner without trying to think of the amount of people that are getting ready for the Liveline lines to open so that they can call Joe Duffy and go to town on the state of this country.
'Won't somebody please think of the children' and all that.
According to the Oireachtas website, the petition, which is said to have been signed by 'thousands', was filed by a Mr. Patrick O'Leary and was received by Leinster House on December 15th.
The official minutes of the Committee's meetings are published on the Oireachtas website and today they read like this:
Being very professional about it all, Committee Chairman, Pádraig MacLochlainn TD, has outlined how the meeting will go.
Our first meeting of 2016 will allow the Committee consider and action a further group of petitions submitted by members of the public. To begin we will discuss a petition that raises concern about patient data, or tissue, being used for medical research purposes without proper consent. We will then look at a petition that calls for an increase in the amount of cycle lanes in Dublin City. Also on the agenda is a petition that requests family members, both holders and non-holders of EU passports, pass border control through the same entry point.
Petition 29/15 calls for an amendment to equality legislation that would see a change to the enrolment policy of certain schools so that they could no longer give preference to students of a particular faith. Lastly we will discuss a petitioner’s request that sports personality Conor McGregor feature on the €1 coin.
It will almost be worth listening to Joe Duffy later today just to hear the anger. Sure, this may be a waste of public time. Even if the Committee wanted it to happen, it would also have to go through our EU overlords. But this is the price of democracy and we're okay with that if it means we get to have a laugh about things like this every once in a while.
