Michael Clifford: No time to cry for Dáil’s shiny happy people

In the hour before the 33rd Dáil got under way, shiny happy people gathered at the gates of Leinster House and praised democracy’s strange and wondrous ways.

A warm, giddy feeling permeated the air, floating around many of the 48 new members of Dáil Éireann. They had made it here to the Big House where laws are made under history’s gaze.