Government parties must regain voters’ trust

Many people perceive that principle has been sacrificed in favour of pragmatism with the resignation of Róisín Shortall.

Current ‘group think’ or consensus in Government seems to suggest that Deputy Shortall somehow failed to fully appreciate realpolitik. I suspect that she understands the concept of realpolitik all too well.

Arguably, what she objected to was the sustaining of ‘parish pump’ politics, however inadvertent. Parish pump politics derives from a clientelist-based politics which through its privileging of the local over the national has bedeviled the creation of solidarity and social equality.