As young leave Ireland, Noonan takes leave of his senses

PICTURE the scene in Cobh in the late 1840s as the huddled and wretchedly emaciated figures litter the quay side, idly flicking through Noonan’s Guide to the New World, musing: “Oooooh, shall I stay here and starve to death, or take a lovely little cruise on a famine ship and get some sun? Decisions, decisions ...”

Flash forward a century and a half and you have the finance minister deploying outrageous flippancy as he effectively says: “Calling it unemployment is just such a drag, cheer up and look at it as a sort of gap year for the poor, yeah?”

It is one thing readjusting to this being a powerless, Toy Town government with nothing to offer except austerity, and no ambition other than to prostrate itself as obsequiously as possible before the Troika, but when they start sneering at the very people who elected them on a wave of misguided hope it really is too much.