Taoiseach Brian Cowen now has a Facebook page

15 Jul 2010

Brian Cowen TD is now on Facebook. The Taoiseach has done what many of his parliamentary colleagues have so far failed to do, he has set up his own Facebook page.

Cowen, who has established his Facebook page only in the last day or so has already, at the time of writing, amassed 169 friends.

On his page, he describes himself as male, looking for ‘Networking’, is currently based in Dublin, Ireland, and his political views, surprise surprise, Fianna Fail.

He greets visitors to the page with the following: “Welcome to my Facebook page … here I will have a chance to connect online with the people of Ireland. I am using this page to update you on my work as T.D and Taoiseach. Brian.”

His bio reads as follows: “My priority is to do my very best to insure fast economic recovery and to get the economy back to growth along with my ministeral members of cabinet. It is of vital importance that we all pull together as a nation in this time of economic distress. I will do the best I can to lead this country out of recession during the rest of my term in office.”

Cowen’s move comes just days after the Government Information Service launched a new social-networking savvy news portal called MerrionStreet.ie which makes use of tools like WordPress, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com