EU presidency an unnecessary distraction from national problems

EXCUSE my pre-Christmas cynicism but I’m dreading the Irish presidency of the EU before it even starts on Jan 1 for a six-month period.

This week brought an unwelcome preview of the type of guff, bluster and nonsense that our politicians are going to inflict on us for the first six months of next year.

At a cost to us of €60m that we can ill-afford our already over-stretched government will waste more time trying to impress foreign politicians and bureaucrats while believing that the public here will somehow be impressed by those efforts and that, somehow, such activity will confer great benefit to Ireland.