We may have a liberal society at last but we’re not happy

THE liberal agenda won, and all we got was condoms, counselling and a different kind of controlling orthodoxy.

We liberals were very sure, when we started to campaign in the sixties and seventies, that we would create, out of old, closed, bitter Ireland a pluralist, live-and-let-live society filled with mutual respect and equal opportunity.

Life in a liberal Ireland would be immeasurably happier than life as our parents and grandparents had experienced it. It just had to be.