There is one unassailable virtue about a democracy. It can’t make the trains run on time or supply essential goods and services cheaply, or make marriages happy, and its ability to run a health service roughly matches its skills at improving the weather. But what it unfailingly does is to give observers a clear sense of how adult it is. By adult, I mean adult: does it comport itself with independence, stoicism, maturity, wisdom, strength, and does it regard its jurisdiction in the same way that adults treat their homes? Does it do the equivalent of locking the windows and doors, insuring itself against fire and theft and intrusion, and is it prepared to do whatever necessary to protect those who dwell in the house?
Which of the above – from “comport itself with” to the final question-mark after “house” – describes the Irish Republic? The fiasco of government-formation with the assistance of a block of independent TDs led by none other than Michael Lowry, TD, is one insight into the low morality and even lower expectations of the Irish electorate. Other insights have been repeatedly provided: How could Beverly Flynn, who assisted bank customers in an offshore tax fraud, not merely be elected TD but was allowed by RTE to default on her huge debt to it? How could the director general of that same organisation, Dee Forbes, be apparently allowed to walk away from the financial shambles in which she left the station with her pension fund intact?
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