Government floored by the generation that knows all about hard times

A SATIRICAL comedy called The Mouse that Roared, starring Peter Sellars, was produced many years ago, but in the past week the Government has seen a normally well-mannered and decorous demographic roaring its rage at its mean-spirited, almost contemptuous, attitude to the first generation born into a newly-liberated Free State.

That generation, the youngest of which would have been born in l938, knows what it means to be submissive, having grown up at a time when the authoritarian rule of church and state controlled every aspect of life.

It surely must have shocked the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Health, all four of whom have their political lineage in Fianna Fáil, that those of an older and less privileged generation had the gall to transform themselves from the anticipated meekness and mildness into vengeful Valkyries and their male counterparts, Zimmerframes or not.