A lot done but an awful lot left to do - Counting down to an election

LIKE an ambitious business person who pushed the boat out to try to impress wavering clients with, say, a corporate box and an excellent meal sluiced down with enviable wines at Croke Park yesterday, and who realises that the project may not have been entirely successful and is quietly adding up the considerable cost of the adventure, objective voters — there may be a few — are beginning to run the slide rule over the performance of our coalition Government.

When all issues, all inherited difficulties and opportunities, all promises made, some abandoned some delivered, are considered does it pass muster? Should it be re-elected?

Of course the answer must be — even if the air is full of pre-election, pre-budget kite flying and talk of when the Taoiseach might go to the country — that it is far too early to say. If this Government, like the Japanese did against the humbled Springboks on Saturday in one of sport’s greatest upsets, play courageously and with real conviction until the very final moment, then their exam card might look very different to how it looks this morning, a day before the Dáil resumes after its summer break.