Given that Eamon Dunphy was the first high-profile publicly-funded public figure to mount the moral high ground by volunteering for a pay cut – followed belatedly by his former nemesis Pat Kenny (Ryan Tubridy, I see, is making a donation to charity; may I recommend the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Licence Free Payers?) – his criticisms of Giovanni Trapattoni could become even more barbed.

Seeing as he’s on €330,000 a year from RTÉ, Eamo can well afford to take a 10% reduction in his retainer. Trap’s salary is a tasty €2million per annum: half of which (just about enough to keep Pat Kenny in autocues) is paid by the FAI, the balance stumped up by businessman Denis O’Brien.

The nation’s priorities are really skewed when our sometimes-seen national soccer team manager ‘earns’ five times the embattled Taoiseach’s ‘take home’. A lot of hard-pressed football folk, not just Dunphy, will be wondering what happened value-for-money, never mind our social-conscience, in this age of wholesale job losses and, at best, ‘pay restraint’. But as the argument went ad nauseam when the search for Steve Staunton’s successor was on: pay peanuts and you get monkeys. So what does that make the rest of us? After watching Willie O’Dea’s carry-on on Questions & Answers the other night it’s certainly looking more and more like a banana republic.