General election 2011 - It’s time to ask the hard questions

BY announcing an election date Taoiseach Brian Cowen has brought the curtain down on what had become a demeaning and dispiriting farce. And not a moment too soon.

The behaviour of too many senior politicians over recent days and months has, if that was possible, made our democracy seem even more remote from the lives of those of us who depend on its effectiveness, steadiness and reassurance to live in peace and some moderate degree of comfort. The Leinster House pantomime had become so very unsettling that it was seriously undermining the hope all of us need to sustain to rebuild this country. It made no contribution either to restoring our international reputation or easing the punitive interest rates we have pay to keep the lights on.

It is not at all certain that Mr Cowen intended to announce a date yesterday but his position, no matter how bellicose he chose to be, had become untenable. He had lost six of his 15 cabinet ministers confirming that his Tuesday night victory was pathetically pyrrhic. It puts his empty triumphalism, in the Dáil on Wednesday, in a more accurate but unfortunately far less flattering light. And, even if there was not a stampede of retiring ministers towards Dublin’s taxi ranks the Greens seemed at the very end of their elastic tether and they would have called time sooner rather than later.