Integrating Eoin Ryan

What odds on Eoin Ryan getting the vacant junior ministry as an "incentive" to run for Fianna Fáil in Dublin South-East at the next general election?
Yes, it would mean that Ryan would have to resign his seat in the European Parliament. It would also mean that Royston Brady would automatically inherit it and that he couldn't run then for Fianna Fáil as Bertie's side-kick in Dublin Central at the next election, as Brady announced he would like when he appeared on The Last Word last Friday.

Ryan has been resisting all entreaties to run in the next general election, apparently peeved by the way he was dropped unjustly as junior minister in 2002. He also felt a lack of support from his Taoiseach when he stood for Europe, at least until Brady's campaign imploded.

So why should he come back to help Bertie now just because the four candidates scrapping for the Fianna Fáil nominations in his constituency for the next general election are polling very poorly, apparently?

Well, it just so happens that Ryan last week called for the creation of a new position among the ranks of junior ministers, a Minister for Integration.

Expressing his concern about the potential for Paris style riots in the new Ireland, and showing a keen geographic knowledge of where "ghettoisation" has occurred throughout Europe, Ryan declared that "we now face the challenge of integration, not as a question of racism, but one of societal change. We must now ask ourselves if we are up to the challenge of handling it properly, of laying the foundations of an integration process which will lead future generations into peaceful co-existence".

Who better to file this role than someone who has experience now of life in Europe as well as previous experience as a junior minister?

Ryan laughed uproariously when I put this to him. But what else could he do? Admit to a cunning plan?