Higgins gives us great expectations

MICHAEL D Higgins comes to the presidency at a time when the country is, in his words, awash with broken expectations.

For a man who is, at times, accused of speaking in abstractions, the words he chose to encapsulate the mood of the people were reassuringly realistic.

Unemployment, mortgage insecurity and collapsing property values — all mentioned in the opening moments of his address — are not the language of poetry. They are the dictionary of daily life for hundreds of thousands of the population.