McLoughlin PAC stonewalling may have done us a favour

YOU may not know it but most of your life as a citizen is regulated by something called ‘the system’.

This is what, on the inside, the apparatus of government is called by those who administer it. You may imagine I am referring to the ministers you see on the telly and that are written about, not always glowingly, in this newspaper and elsewhere. But you would be wrong. No, ‘the system’ is much more exclusive. It is the civil service; in practice, the senior civil servants that run it. Occasionally looser usage of the term stretches to include state agencies. But they are generally held in the same regard that Jesuits held Christian Brothers; not much. State agencies may be delegated the doing of, but they are seldom called upon when it comes to the deciding.

In ‘the system’ ministers are club house members. They have the best seats, enjoy due deference but they are as useful as decoys as they are as deciders. They make speeches, take flak and where necessary lose elections to ensure democratic accountability. Then ‘the system’ moves on.