If we’re ever to have a real republic we need to change the politicians

WE are really in the midst of a revolution of sorts. All of the old certainties are being washed away. People are now questioning all the previously authoritative figures in society.

Politics has become so enmeshed with corruption that political leaders are discredited, along with the bankers who engaged in daylight robbery, the medical consultants who were not even reading their letters of referral and the church figures who have been exposed with facilitating and covering up the most vile crimes against children. It is time to take stock of our position.

In July 1945, Taoiseach Éamon de Valera treated the Dáil like schoolchildren by reading the definition of a republic from various encyclopaedias and dictionaries. All essentially stressed that a republic was a country, without a monarchy, in which the supreme power was vested in representatives elected by the people.