Irish people cheated by an Irish solution to an Irish problem

On its election, the Coalition promised a democratic revolution but in four years in power it has offered nothing but more of the same, says Lucinda Creighton

IT IS often claimed that the reason so little changes in public life is that we are too fond of the concept of “Irish solutions to Irish problems”.

By this, we mean that, when it comes to dealing with crises over issues as diverse as contraception in the 1970s and the tribunal-led response to corruption in the 1990s, governments favour appearing to deal with rather than actually dealing with real problems.