Thirty seven people perished in a casino in Manila earlier this month after it was deliberately set on fire by a man armed with a machine gun. I heard about it when Islamic State (Isis) claimed responsibility. Subsequently, it emerged the attacker, Jessie Carlos, was a gambling addict who owed tens of thousands of dollars in debts. He had been barred from all city casinos at his family’s request and was mentally unstable. The attack had nothing to do with Isis.

It reinforced what I have been thinking since that dreadful atrocity in Nice last year: that there are lone wolves out there of whom Isis has no knowledge but are happy to claim as one of theirs. Let them claim away. Why should we give them any more heroic and macabre headlines?

Meanwhile, I cannot believe how reckless pockets of the media have been here in focussing on the vulnerability of Ireland to a terrorist attack. Newspapers and radio programmes have gone out of their way to highlight Ireland as a soft touch for an attack, particularly in the wake of the atrocities in London and Manchester.

Such speculation is nothing new but in recent weeks the talk has been relentless with journalists and commentators trying to out-do each other with breathless reports of how open we are to an attack. It is almost like we are wishing an attack, or inviting one at the very least. What exactly is the point, considering there isn’t a village in Europe that isn’t a target? Nevertheless, we managed to give front-page credence to a self-proclaimed ex-jihadist with a pseudonym who claims that there are “150” radicalised Islamists living here “laughing” at us. Some scoop that.

Truth is, if these nutcases want to attack, they will. Nice, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Brussels and of course London and Manchester spring to mind as cities which were not able to defend themselves despite their much superior intelligence agencies and defence forces. Yes, the Metropolitan police are being rightly praised for their quick response to the London Bridge attack, but only after eight innocent people had been slaughtered. And in Brussels I saw for myself army personnel with machine guns and armoured tanks visible virtually everywhere before the March 2016 bombings.

The gardaí don’t really need headline-grabbing reporters to tell them that we might be a target for terrorists. Despite the impression given, I am sure the gardaí have heard of Isis. Since every town and village in Europe is a target for Isis, what exactly has been the point of all this hysteric coverage in recent weeks?

Leo’s time

Leo Varadkar and I have a couple of things in common. We both come from Castleknock and we both have an uncle who is a farmer. After that the similarities begin to diminish.

The powers that be in Agriculture House, not to mention Bluebell, will be clinging to the fact that he has indeed an uncle who farms, because with so many mouths to feed in Cabinet, it might be easy for him to overlook the important contribution agriculture makes to the rural economy as he aims to tackle the big ticket issues such as health and housing – not to mention trying to make Fine Gael sexy again.

This urban-rural divide was most evident in Simon Coveney’s landslide membership win. Rural older farmers voted for Simon; rural older TDs voted for Leo. Interestingly, the parliamentarians voted almost en masse for the Castleknock man, right down the west coast. Has Leo promised them the sun, moon and stars or were they just reflecting farmer opinion of Simon’s 2013 CAP deal down west?