You cannot understand the governance of modern Ireland, I would argue, without understanding the career of the new chairperson of the national planning agency, Paul Reid.
We’ll start with Reid’s youthful politics: Like many high-rising members of his generation, he was in the Workers Party in his early 20s, espousing the ideas of marxist-leninism. Whether these communist instincts were later tempered by his circa €400,000 salary as head of the HSE, we shall never know. But it is important to note that a background on the political hard-left is never a barrier to rising in Irish society in the way that a background on the political hard-right would be.
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