Euro ministers’ move may be more significant than Shortall resignation

IT can be hard sometimes to figure out the long-term significance of political events.

There were two of them last week. One of them got an awful lot of attention in the media and elsewhere, the other a bit less so. But it may be that the less noticed event might turn out to be more important.

No doubt the opposition parties will seize on the discomfiture faced by the Government over the resignation of Roisín Shortall and the events that led up to it. And, of course, that’s what oppositions should do. Roisín’s resignation is deeply embarrassing. Fair or not, it raises immediate questions about Eamon Gilmore’s political management of a difficult inter-personal and political situation.