The Dáil returns - Rivalries an impediment to recovery

The Dáil will sit for the first time after the summer break next Tuesday and, as anyone with even a passing interest in the country’s affairs realises, it could be a deeply divisive term and probably impose changes that will make life less comfortable for most citizens.

Unfortunately, it seems that we are at the point when doing the hard thing and the right thing, the only thing left to us really, are one and the same. That infamous can has run out of road and been kicked to death. The post-mortem results — the dreaded December budget — will not make for pretty reading. This week’s missive from the IMF, though expressed in the gentlest of very firm terms, confirmed that.

Despite all of that the return of the Dáil is little more than a ceremonial set piece, a kind of democratic, up-from-the-country trooping of the colour, and it would be foolish to expect that the event by itself will provoke any new set of ideas — much less solutions — to confront our difficulties. That may seem a sceptical view but it is not because, as any politician will assure anyone who cares to listen, the work of parliament continues whether it is sitting or not. In these days of huge challenge that is very obviously the case.