Gardaí and PAC clash - Sad example of failures in public life

As Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald yesterday confronted the strengthening possibility that she might become the second justice minister to lose a cabinet seat over one of the scandals that have so altered the perception of An Garda Síochána, another episode in our culture war played out in a Leinster House committee room when senior gardaí were guests of the Public Accounts Committee.

The session was a profoundly disheartening lesson in how this republic has been made dangerously dysfunctional by one sectional interest after another.

That the sitting came just days after RTÉ exposed how some hospital consultants sidestep public care obligations shows how routinely sectional interests usurp the common good.