Michael Collins's expertise could have prevented economic meltdown

Recently, as the anniversary of Michael Collins’s death approached, a man decided to end his life in a fashion too horrific to detail here. The action was shocking but the outcome has become a commonplace in modern Ireland; suicide is now running at over 50% pre-crash levels.

This terrible statistic is part of the aftershock from the blow delivered to Ireland by a variety of corrupt and lazy politicians, senior civil servants, bankers, businessmen, lawyers, accountants, and stockbrokers.

We have lost our economic sovereignty. Our young people are shoaling out of the country. There is an army of unemployed and we are told that we have given some €65bn to “our” banks. They have reciprocated, not by lending to industry, but by allowing jumped-up bank clerks to tell decent people that they can’t have Sky television and that €10 a day is too much money to spend on food.