Politics borrows fad from business - Pause for thought

The think-in — also known or disparaged as away days, team-building weekends, bonding breaks, and time-and-money-down-the-drain exercises — is a fad borrowed by political parties from the world of business.

TDs and senators meet in resort hotels and country houses to, well, think about the autumn Dáil session and workshop — this is now a verb — their party’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

In both business and politics, they Think-ins can also be platforms for grandstanding, pretending to involve people in decisions already taken,attention-seeking by people eager for career advancement, and positing six impossible things before breakfast.

They are not always a success.

Mr Varadkar’s first as Taoiseach was marked by criticism of his unthinking boast that Ireland had “one of the lowest levels of homelessness”, when it was patently the case that a record number of people were living in emergency accommodation.

There’s an idea here, perhaps, for an academic looking for something useful to do: A cost-benefit analysis of the away day’s contribution to an organisation’s ultimate success or failure.