Penalty points crisis - A day of reckoning for Kenny

Today’s cabinet meeting has assumed an importance that the participants could not have anticipated even a few days ago.

It is uncertain if all of those involved have accepted what is at stake or, if they have, that they will confront the issues or protect the principles at issue.

The meeting’s conclusions will show if our political system and its most senior participants are capable of embracing new ideals or if the old, musty curtains drawn around far too much society-defining debate or decision making remain firmly closed, blocking out even the gentlest breezes of change or transparency. Once again, and at another important moment, we may have to read the phrase “cabinet meeting” as shorthand for closing down debate, silencing dissent, taking important, difficult issues off the public agenda and facilitating the kind of stymieing secrecy we rightly condemn when we see it elsewhere.