Stability and recovery still the priorities - Ireland goes to the polls

TODAY we exercise one of the great privileges, and discharge one of the hard-won obligations, of living in a participative democracy. We vote for a new government.

This is an opportunity unimagined by so many of the world’s population that we cannot take it lightly. By voting we celebrate in the most meaningful way the events of a century ago, events provoking far less authentic but enthusiastic evocations today. Could there be a better way to honour those who stepped forward in 1916, no matter how you view that Easter’s events and their sometimes tragic legacy, than by voting today? It is very hard to think of one.

This reality persists despite what was often an uninspiring, lacklustre, and occasionally inane election campaign. It was all too often dishonest or cynically evasive, aping the post-factual rants driving Donald Trump’s alarming march on the White House. The campaign frequently plumbed new depths of mediocrity — yes, that was, incredibly, possible. It was all too often dispiriting and fed into the disconcerting sense of disconnect and scepticism, if not cynicism, eating away at our our political system.