The Dáil resumes - Make sceptics eat their words

The Dáil resumes after the summer today and, as Gerard Howlin puts it so succinctly elsewhere on this page, it does so “serene in the knowledge that alone of the five main legislative assemblies on these islands, it is impervious to the possibility of effective change”.

What a chilling indictment that is. It is made even more so by the almost forgotten fact that this Government went into office with a mandate for profound, society-shifting change. The script for the Dáil term is sadly predictable too. Opposition parties will focus on broken or deferred promises and Government ministers and deputies will bite their lip, trying not to trot out the jaded what-a-mess-we-inherited line even if it remains the defining truth for this administration.

As budget day approaches, Government will run ideas they are uncertain about up the usual flag pole while opposition members try to goad them into making impossible promises or, better again from their perspective, get them to rule out attractive sounding but impossible concessions that feed into the premature idea that it’s “pay-back time”. The tone for something like the usual fantasy was set yesterday morning when Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin told us that “he was preparing to be the next Taoiseach”. This seems, especially for 20-seat Fianna Fáil, a Pollyanna aspiration dependent on an outbreak of amnesia on the scale of the Spanish Flu epidemic that cost 16m lives just after the First World War.

Hardly a realistic prospect in a country too wedded to the past. That Mr Martin “ruled out” partnership with Fine Gael makes Gerard Howlin’s assessment even more deadening.

As the term progresses, attention will turn to the election. The Pandora’s Box of promises will be reopened, the auction will begin, and the unchanging cycle will start all over. Politicians universally accuse the media of undue scepticism but they have no idea how uplifting it would be if their achievements warranted another, more positive response.

It is only fair to acknowledge that considerable progress has been made on the economy, but as anyone who cares for the future of this country realises, so much more needs to be done. How wonderful it would be if it was done and crippling scepticism could be replaced with optimism and pride.