As things stand, though, with the proviso that they can change quickly, the Taoiseach is going to cruise to re-election, and an unprecedented fourth consecutive term in Government for Fine Gael.
If the tax ends up putting drivers off the road, it is certainly hard to argue that it is effective.
The Minister for Health, despite his Harvard degrees and his once-touted administrative mind, cannot solve scoliosis, or waiting lists, or fix Limerick hospital. So he’s going to give your kids the pill, and call himself a progressive while doing so.
Breaking our own fiscal rules; expecting others to subsidise our defence; lecturing the rest of the EU on foreign policy. It’s a bad combination.
“Where the offence is at the lower level of seriousness, there is no suggestion of sharing or distributing images, the accused is co-operative and it is a first offence, the option of a suspended sentence should at least be considered”.
You cannot create an office of President, fill it with a capable politician – which Von Der Leyen is – and then expect a different result.
If the courts start making decisions – as they were urged to do in this instance – based on how the climate in the country might be affected by those decisions, then they are no longer impartial judicial actors, but political actors.
We got a Government and a society that is both institutionally incompetent on the big problems, and institutionally tyrannical on the small stuff.
The stunning thing here, really, is that the polling consistently now has Sinn Fein on course to lose seats, rather than gain them, at the next election.
London’s demographics, a new book you should read; the Irish soccer mess, and why Gript won’t stop asking about the Bike Shed.
Before the debate, all of the fundamentals pointed to a very tight election decided by a handful of votes in a few states. After the debate, that remains the case.
The budget surplus for this one year alone in Ireland was projected by the Minister for Finance in April to be in the order of €8billion.