Deliver your election promises. Then we might begin to feel optimistic

IN CASE you missed it while gorging on turkey at the weekend, the latest zany instruction from Government is to “embrace a policy of realistic optimism” — as opposed to the unrealistic optimism we all evidently suffered from in advance of the election.

Decrying the funereal atmosphere that has enveloped the country since the Celtic Tiger croaked, an upbeat minister of state at the Department of Finance, Brian Hayes, said it is time for the nation to stop moaning and whinging in an incessant “overdose of pessimism”.

“Now that we have had our period of mourning and denial, it is time to begin the process of national resurgence by embracing a new policy of what I would call realistic optimism,” he wrote in an opinion piece on Sunday.