We got a Government and a society that is both institutionally incompetent on the big problems, and institutionally tyrannical on the small stuff.
Our céad míle fáilte is not some uniquely Irish thing that foreigners wouldn’t understand: It’s just the Irish word for Wilkommenskultur. That didn’t help the Germans, and it won’t help us, either.
One of the problems Ireland and Irish leaders have is that if our problems could be solved by a few speeches at Beal na Bláth and some flowery rhetoric about our glorious republican dead, then this would be the wealthiest nation on earth.
“This is what Government should be doing but is too afraid to do” may well prove a better message than simply “Watergrasshill has said no”.
Because trust has been lost, simple promises to “fix” the immigration system will not work.
Asked to choose between alienating Irish Times reporters and Labour Party TDs on one hand, and their own voters and activists on the other, Independent Ireland chose to ditch its own national chairwoman.
The whole point of forming the party was to build an organisation that could add more TDs and Senators in order to work towards entering Government. To do that, the party had to acquire a committed activist base. That is where Elaine Mullally came in.
At a stroke, and for no good reason, the party has just made itself untrustworthy to many of those who voted for it. It is a calamitous error of political judgement.
France
Good politicians share the same instincts, regardless of their views.
Yet such an event would immediately shift the political ground rightward in Ireland by several degrees, and be a much better situation than that which faces those of us frustrated by the lie of the political land as it stands.
There will always be those who put their names on a ballot paper out of ego, or spite, or a delusional belief that they can win simply by so doing.