The international and Irish media have been having a bit of fun with the story of the prankster who managed to hang paintings of a semi-naked Brian Cowen in two central Dublin art galleries, the National Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Academy.
The accounts have centered on who might be responsible for putting the portraits on display, and on RTE's craven decision to apologize for showing the images of the Taoiseach on television.
However there is a much more serious issue not getting much attention - that is the ease with which someone penetrated the security of the galleries, with their watchful attendants and CCTV cameras.
A person able to walk into the National Gallery especially with a picture in his satchel, hammer a nail into a wall, and hang it without being stopped or even noticed, could just as easily have walked out with some of the masterpieces on display. The collections there contain priceless works, including a Renaissance masterpiece by Caravaggio, Impressionist paintings by Monet and Picasso, Dutch 17th century masters by Vermeer, paintings by British artists Reynolds and Gainsborough, and some of the most important works of Ireland's Jack B. Yeats and Hazel Lavery.
If any single one of these items had been taken out by the intruder, it would constitute a major theft, thought not perhaps on the scale of the notorious robbery of "The Scream" by Edward Munch in Norway in 2004 or of Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" from the National Gallery in London in 1961.
Another point about the Dublin prank causing a buzz among gallery staff is the possibility that it was a protest against the government's proposed amalgamation of the National Gallery and two other galleries in Dublin, which has been roundly condemned in the art world as unworkable.
But whatever was going on, the story has got people talking and has been given extra legs by the decision of the gardai (Irish police) to call into Today FM radio station in Dublin to demand emails allegedly sent by the artist to presenter Ray Darcy.
On air Darcy said that the police officer had told the producer Will Hanifin that "the powers that be" wanted to ask him about the hanging of the pictures, one of which showed Cowen with a toilet roll in his hand, the other holding underpants. The gardai have three charges in mind, incitement to hatred, indecency and criminal damage to the wall.
Hanifin told The Irish Times that the gardai had lost their sense of humor and declined to hand over the emails.
The artist has been identified as 35-year-old Conor Casby, who denies hanging them in the galleries and who went voluntarily to Pearse Street gardai station on March 25.
RTE meanwhile apologized for showing the unflattering paintings of Cowen on the evening television news on March 22 as inappropriate and in bad taste.
Charlie Flanagan, the shadow Justice Minister in the Fine Gael opposition party said that with many unsolved murders, the use of police resources on a practical joke "that offended the Taoiseach's ego" was scandalous.