'Politics is corrupt, public administration is corrupt, and democracy is dead'

There are many other areas of abuse in Ireland that go unchecked — including people who desperately need access to mental health services having no rights whatsoever, writes Fergus Finlay

WE HAVE a really deep problem of accountability in our country. I shouldn’t have got to the venerable age I am without realising this. I am absolutely convinced that the issue of accountability, and how its absence runs the risk of corrupting our state, should be a central issue in the general election campaign. Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be room in the “fiscal space” to allow the issue even to be discussed.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Grace here. I was by no means the first person to write about her, nor the first to start a campaign to try to get to the truth of what happened to her. There is now a consensus that we need to know that truth, that we can do no justice without getting to the bottom of it.