Policies fuel healthy debate as minister says: ‘If I can’t do it, it can’t be done!’

ONE of the worst legacies from the 2002 General Election was its hot air and empty rhetoric.

For in truth, it was a non-event when it came to ideas, to policies, to ideology. Fianna Fáil held the whip hand from early on and the opposition found itself unable to fight toe-to-toe on the key areas of health, crime and the economy. The reason? Their approach and policies lacked coherence. And each party attacked on its own, leading to fragmentation, making it easy for FF to pick them off.

We are looking at a transformed landscape. For one, the media had a sense of being duped last time and its approach has been more aggressive (sometimes overly so).