New charges fiasco seems probable - Pay-by-weight system

WHEN he comes to consider his legacy, and that moment cannot be too far away, Taoiseach Enda Kenny will be able to enter at least three significant achievements on the positive side of the ledger.

On a personal level, he can take pride in the fact that he was the first Fine Gael Taoiseach re-elected and that he revived a party spiralling towards irrelevance. That he defied all expectations to do this, that he was completely underestimated, may deepen his sense of personal achievement. His greatest achievement, however, is that he and his Labour partners delivered something close enough to an economic miracle over the lifetime of the last Government.

It is not too difficult to imagine which issue will top the negative side of the ledger. The cringe-making political and administrative farce around the establishment of Irish Water was, and continues to be, the greatest failure in the implementation and non-delivery of an entirely legitimate public policy in recent decades. So great was the fiasco that it, like the idea of gun control in America or European solidarity in Britain, became a rallying point for discontent, anger and a new level of contempt for a discredited establishment. This failure and the capitulation it spawned, defined the shape of today’s Government. It is the root cause of our “new politics” which is, in the cold light of day, something more like the committee that set out to design a new, better horse but created a camel rather than a renewal of democracy.