Updated 10.53am

Via: Mattie McGrath Facebook 

YOU KNOW THE latest viral craze has jumped the shark when politicians get involved and so it is the case with the ice bucket challenge.

Or in Tipperary South TD Mattie McGrath’s case it’s the ice digger challenge as he got a JCB to tip water over him, taking the craze to new extremes.

McGrath also nominated several local political colleagues as well as Children’s Minister James Reilly and the Kerry South TD Michael Healy Rae.

He isn’t the first politician to get involved in the initiative with Labour TD Ciara Conway taking the challenge last week and nominating a number of her Dáil colleagues:

Her Labour colleague Michael McCarthy has also taken up the challenge and nominated, among others, the Fine Gael TD Helen McEntee:

Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins says he’s done the ice bucket challenge but we’ve yet to see the proof:

Here is the proof that one of Collins’s nominees, Willie O’Dea, took a soaking this morning:

While Labour’s John Lyons says his mum did it though he had a few technical problems uploading the video:

So far the initiative, which has taken the western world by storm, has raised some €680,000 for the Irish Motor Neurone Disease Association with some shops in Ireland literally running out of ice.

First published 10.02am

Read: The Dáil Plinth has done the Ice Bucket Challenge

Poll: Have you done the Ice Bucket Challenge?