Reflections on a lost decade: Ireland let down by poor Dáil performance

Putting aside angels-on-a-pinhead arguments about the actual year in which a decade expires and a new one commences — is it January 1, 2020, or 12 months on in 2021 and, anyway, who really cares? — what we hope will be the peace and quiet of St Stephen’s Day brings an opportunity to reflect not only on the country’s 2019 but also on aspects of the Dáil’s less-than-adequate performance since 2010.

All those years ago, Brian Cowen was taoiseach, Pope Benedict XVI sent a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics apologising for child abuse in the Church, the corpses of 40 children from a home for “fallen women” run by evangelical Protestants were found in unmarked graves in a Dublin cemetery, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) arrived on these shores to start the dismal work of dragging the drowning banks, and the wider economy, out of the deep end.