Leadership lesson for Cowen

WHATEVER one thinks of how the Government is handling the economic crisis, there is widespread agreement that our leaders could be doing a better job in communicating with the rest of us about what is going on and what the future may hold for us.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen could follow the example of US president Franklin D Roosevelt.

FDR used his famous “fireside chats” not just to keep the nation informed about government efforts to tackle the Great Depression that beset America in the 1930s, but to try and bring the people with him in his quest to lift the country out of economic collapse.