The next Dáil term - Cowen faces his greatest challenge

THE Dáil returned from its spring break yesterday and if most of us were to be honest we’d far prefer to try clean up the scandalous mess left by Michael Fingleton at Irish Nationwide — a loss of €2.9bn for 2009 — rather than take on the huge challenges facing our Government.

Even if we can still, remembering what our mother told us about being kind to others, muster a smidgen of sympathy for politicians it is quickly dissipated by the briefest consideration of their unforgivable role in our economic collapse. Their kid-glove treatment of the chief architects of our crisis is a festering wound and is, as every El Dorado pension deal is uncovered, becoming the symbolic fault line between an untouchable, self-serving cabal — including senior academics and public servants — and the vast majority of Irish people.

In a society where every worker and nearly every household has seen their pension expectations diminished this is a ticking time bomb and there is only one way to defuse it. The issue might be avoided by politicians for a while more but the contrast between the terms enjoyed by failed — the kindest possible term — bankers, developers and regulators and the vast majority of Irish people is immoral and unacceptable.