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• Gladwell and Minister Harney

  April 28, 2010 @ 11:55 pm | by Bryan

  I really like Malcolm Gladwell. I had the privilege of listening to him speak when UCD hosted the writer a little over a year ago. On that occasion, he even kindly answered a question I put before him as he signed my copy of Outliers. Days later, while reading the book, I remember disagreeing with something he had written (the first and only time that I’ve seriously disagreed with Gladwell). Mixed in with stories about Mozart, Steve Jobs, and Korean pilots, while defending his 10 000 hour thesis, Gladwell makes the case for charter schools.

  Charter schools seem to me to be a particularly American solution to poverty. A testimony to the mastery of the market, they demonstrate what can be accomplished given the right incentives. Typically, inner-city American children fall behind their better-off cohorts academically. The root problem is that social issues keep these children from devoting as much time to their studies as others. Charter schools therefore start early in the morning and end late in the day. They also offer shorter vacations since they aim to keep their pupils in active learning for as long as possible. The idea is that if these children are in school for a sufficient period of time, they will cover as much ground as children in better social circumstances and will therefore be more likely to succeed academically. And they do just that, making the schools very popular in poor areas, despite being almost cruelly taxing on their pupils.

  I don’t like the idea of charter schools. An old paediatrician once called me a bleeding heart liberal, but on this issue, I think we would agree. Charter schools, in my opinion, treat the symptom rather than the underlying pathology. If poverty is the issue, I don’t see how allowing a few to keep up academically can be thought of as anything but a temporary bandage. Reading Gladwell hold up this bandage as a potential solution makes me more than a little uncomfortable.

  That same feeling was evoked in me by the minister for health, who wrote:

  …The critical question is how we use all resources, particularly public resources, to help people stay healthy and to get best outcomes for patients from healthcare…

  …It’s a critical question for all developed countries because the hospitalisation model of healthcare is financially unsustainable…

  …I invite people to recognise that it’s more important how money is spent than how it is raised from the public…

  …Our policy is equity of access to publicly-funded health services. We are open to using all providers who meet quality and value for money standards to contribute to public services…

  A comparison between Gladwell and Minister Harney isn’t quite fair. I generally tend to agree with the former while I mostly disagree with the latter. I just don’t share her faith in the market. Gladwell believes in charter schools because he believes that if you spend long enough at something (10 000 hours), you’ll do well at it given some aptitude. Minister Harney on the other hand, from what I can gather, believes in the market.

  But even before we get to the question of service delivery, an important question must be answered. What does ‘equity of access to publicly-funded health services’ mean? We can even simplify that. What is equity? Does it mean that people get what they pay for, such that those who are willing to pay extra are entitled to more or better or faster services? Does it mean that absolutely no distinctions should be drawn between patients, so that regardless of one’s ability to pay, or how expensive one’s treatment may be, each will be treated ‘equally’? Or does it mean that each citizen will be allocated a fixed sum of money, health credits so to speak, and will be entitled only to their fair share such that when those credits run out, they are no longer eligible for state health services? Or that the state’s health services will be structured so as to serve the greatest number; meaning that those whose ailments are expensive to treat will have to access their healthcare elsewhere?

  And what about the suggestion that ‘the hospitalisation model of healthcare is financially unsustainable’? Isn’t it only unsustainable if one holds to a certain set of values? The Cubans (I know, this example is well worn now), seem to value healthcare above modern consumer goods. I imagine that the idea that the hospitalisation model is unsustainable, on a budget of €15 billion, when far greater sums can be found to prop up the financial services sector, would make no sense to them.

  Doesn’t the question of what is or isn’t financially sustainable then really rest on what we take as our foundational principles? Isn’t the same true of what we mean by the word ‘equitable’?

  I suppose what worries me most about the minister’s article isn’t so much the matter of our ideological differences, or my fear that, as Dr Christine O’Malley suggested on radio today, the subtext is a desire to privatise health. No, the real worry for me is that we make Gladwell’s mistake and fight over which bandage to apply rather than engaging in debate over the real underlying issue. What are our views on justice? What does equity look like? Who should get what and why?

  The only way €15 billion isn’t enough to sustain the health of less than 5 million people is when there is an attempt to throw money at the issue instead of directly addressing those difficult core issues.

  Comments (25)

• On global migration

  April 21, 2010 @ 2:56 pm | by Bryan

  The topic that seems to generate the most response on this blog is immigration. That makes sense, I suppose. There aren’t too many fora out there that facilitate a back and forth between those who are concerned about the consequences of immigration (imagined and real), and immigrants themselves, or those who view immigration in a positive light.

  Although I often refer to the issue, I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly spelt out my own position. Here goes:

  Like most of you, I remember my parents’ painstaking attempts to get me to understand the difference between right and wrong. One of the main pillars of this concept was the idea of fairness. There is something about the fact that just about anyone on one end of the world can visit, or relocate to most parts of the other, while only a very small proportion of the latter can even visit the former, that violates that basic sense of fairness. As I got older, I was taught that life isn’t fair, but that it ought to be just. I was taught that fairness would mean every time my sister got a doll I should get one too, whether or not I ‘deserved’ or even wanted one. Justice, on the other hand, meant that the same concern shown to her would be shown to me. We would be treated in a similar manner, based on consistent principles, and shown the same love, even if that meant sometimes one got gifts, rewards, privileges or duties that the other did not.

  That the rules governing global migration are unfair is in my opinion uncontroversial; they obviously are. That just makes them consistent with life, and I can happily live with that. What I struggle with is the fact that they are also unjust. What has the average Irish person done to deserve the option to visit or relocate to a bunch of different countries should she so wish that the average Tswana, Peruvian or Bangladeshi has not?

  The highly influential political philosopher John Rawls believed the answer lies in political culture. His answer in The Law of Peoples, sounds like a version of a conservative American politician’s self-help, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, take-responsibility philosophy. The Tswana, Peruvian and Bangladeshi, by this account, need to sort out the political culture in their country because all countries have the resources to reach a satisfactory level of ‘development’, and then they won’t have to migrate. Not only can they then stay put, but once they no longer pose the risk of not returning to their own place of origin, rich countries will grant them the privilege of visiting and spending their money on said rich countries’ tourism sector. I’ve added to it, but that seems to me to be Rawls’ general point, and it’s one that many, maybe most people in the rich world, share.

  I’m all for personal responsibility. And should an individual, a group, or a national culture have negative consequences, then it’s perfectly just to let them have to deal with those consequences. But I struggle to understand how anyone who has ever paid any attention to the world beyond their front door can believe that a nation’s condition is solely, even primarily the result of its culture. Take Ireland for example. It hasn’t been a closed system in which the only things that have really mattered to its trajectory have been internal. Nations are open systems, and a lot of national culture comes about as a result of external influences. And then, as Thomas Pogge brilliantly highlights, the global political economy is such that with all the will in the world, few nations can pursue the policies they want without first taking note of the external environment.

  Maybe that’s where the fork in the road lies with respect to migration and global justice more broadly. Some see the matter as predominantly local while others think the international context is decisive. That most of the former are the beneficiaries of the status quo and the latter the losers is telling of human nature, and that probably cuts both ways.

  So, if the material benefits of human labour are unevenly, and unjustly distributed, if the same is also true of natural resources, such that some places give up the resources around and beneath them for much less benefit than that accrued by those who take them, why shouldn’t people be allowed to follow the wealth? I completely understand and empathise with the concerns that some have over the effects of ‘mass migration’, but frankly, I think the right to follow the world’s resources trumps those concerns (empirical studies show that the average American consumes something like 6 times his share of the planet, the average European 4, and the African less than her full share).

  The real issue, of course, is global distributive and regulatory justice. But until that’s addressed, I can’t see there being a plausible moral argument against the right of the poor to follow their share of planet.

  Comments (21)

• Fundamentalists and Pragmatists

  March 29, 2010 @ 3:20 pm | by Bryan

  

  Delegates watch Green Party leader John Gormley’s speech on TV by candlelight to mark Earth Hour. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill.

  In a fascinating episode of Tonight with Vincent Browne, the Green Party, specifically Minister Ciarán Cuffe, were taken to task for what Browne sees as ethically dubious political behaviour. I seem to keep bringing up the Greens in a negative light. I have nothing against the party and my intention is not to unfairly pick on them. It’s just that they raise difficult questions about the nature of social and political change.

  On Vincent Browne’s programme, political scientist and Green Party expert John Barry suggested that what the party was faced with was the reality that politics is ‘the art of the possible’; that realisation leading to conflict between the so-called ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘pragmatists’. On this reading, what may be seen by some as the morphing of an activist party into the very entity it once stood against must be viewed in light of the payoffs that have come along the way. That is, to get things done, one must be a ‘proper’ party, and in order to become a ‘proper party’, certain traits that make the activist party what it is must be got rid of. The ‘fundamentalists’ will be unhappy and may even jump ship, they will hopefully continue to provide something of a moral compass as members of the broader movement, but only the ‘pragmatists’ will be able to effect legislative change. It should therefore come as little surprise that praise from the media that the Greens have matured into a ‘serious’ political entity and have outgrown their ‘quirky’ activist ways will hearten the ‘pragmatists’ while bitterly disappointing the ‘fundamentalists’.

  Maybe my problem is that I’m a ‘fundamentalist’ myself – something of a political purist – but I really don’t buy into the idea that politics is the art of the possible. Rather, I am more convinced by the view that Mark Haugaard ascribes to Foucault: that politics is a continuation of war by other means. And if that notion is coupled to the idea that identity is a crucial battleground in that war, then the morphing of a group, no matter how quirky, into something that sits more at ease with establishment groups represents a significant defeat for the once quirky body and their supporters. I just cannot see how you change the culture of a place by adopting it. Pragmatism may very well be the expedient route to power, but if the person who arrives at that destination is barely recognisable from the one who set forth, what’s the point?

  Which begs the question, should groups like the Green movement even get involved with formal politics? Conventional wisdom is that people should get involved. I give some of my ablest Irish friends a hard time for complaining about things without putting themselves forward as candidates for elected office. I’m not so sure any more. What if engagement necessarily leads to a Green-like metamorphosis? What if the social structure of the political process bends all who participate into the mould of the typical politician?

  Does anyone have George Lee’s number? I wonder if he came to a similar conclusion? I wonder if disengagement, or maybe mass disengagement, can be turned into a means of bringing about structural socio-political change?

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• Reshuffling personalities

  March 25, 2010 @ 4:00 pm | by Bryan

  

  Appointments of Ministers: (front seated) Pat Moylan, Séamus Kirk, Mr John Murray, Brian Cowen, Mary Coughlan; (Back row) Éamon Ó Cuív, Mary Hanafin, Batt O’Keeffe, Pat Carey, Tony Killeen and John Curran. Photograph: Cyril Byrne.

  I have been trying to make sense of the latest cabinet reshuffle and the response to it. To begin with, the response. From Stephen Collins’ excellent report:

  According to Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny – “The Taoiseach has retreated from the challenge of leadership that fell upon his shoulders. He could have been courageous, taken a different approach and from among those on his own backbenches he could have reshuffled his Cabinet so that it would bring some semblance of life to an exhausted group who are fatigued and flattened. They are without ideas, energy, ideals or commitment.”
  Translation, I don’t like the people Brian Cowen picked?

  Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore – “Why is the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, still in office? By any standards, she should be removed from office. While I acknowledge she has been a good Minister in other departments and has made a major contribution to public life, her record as Minister for Health and Children has been hopeless.”
  In other words, I really don’t like one of the people Cowen picked?

  Last but not least, Green Party leader, John Gormley – the appointment of two of his party’s TDs as junior ministers represented a “very successful day for the Greens in Government”.
  That is, I’m delighted that two of my people got picked?

  And then there’s the reshuffle itself. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the guiding principle was ensuring stability, and that by rewarding allies, pacifying wavering partners, and only moving things around so long as doing so did not get in the way of the rewarding and pacifying.

  Is it just me, or do the political leaders all seem to be far more interested in who gets political power than with what gets done with that power? Even the Greens, who probably have the clearest political agenda of the lot, seem more concerned with staying in power than with realising their vision, as if that vision could not possibly be realised without their presence in government. It is easy to pick on the Greens, but I can’t help but feel that everyone else is the same. Had the Taoiseach sacked half of his cabinet, or the whole lot, and replaced them with the most promising and articulate deputies from every party, I’m sure he would have been hailed as a genius. But would that really have been any different from the action he took? Sure, it would have meant spreading the political power around like a good democrat, but what good does it do the country in the long run if the distribution of power is effected for the sake of popularity, legacy or just good naturedness rather than for personal political survival? Isn’t the real issue the socio-economic transformation of the state?

  What I found really sad about the reshuffle and then the terms in which it has been subsequently analysed is that apart from the fuzzy, non-specific talk of innovation and economic recovery, there hadn’t been much in the way of articulating a comprehensive vision for the future. Not by government, nor the opposition. The discussion has been something like discussing the merits of a new football signing without any reference to team he has joined, long term goals, their style of play, their likely position at the end of the season, the competitions in which they will be involved, and so forth.

  I think it’s really sad that whether a politician is a good media performer, is articulate in the Dáil, is liked or otherwise, comes from such and such a part of the country, and so forth, that these things set the parameters of the discussion on political appointments as opposed to questions around where the country is going.

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• On strike

  March 22, 2010 @ 11:26 pm | by Bryan

  

  A large queue of people outside the Molesworth Street Passport Office in Dublin before lunchtime today. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times.

  The first industrial action that I came across in this country was the nurses’ work-to-rule a couple years ago. I distinctly remember thinking that if this is how the rich world does strikes, then either it has got something right that my part of the world has yet to figure out, or people here just don’t understand the concept of the strike.

  Leader of the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, brought that back to mind. In response to the strike by officials at the passport office, he is reported as saying:

  I full understand the anger of low-paid public sector workers who have had their salaries unilaterally cut twice during the past twelve months, but those who are suffering as a result of action now being taken are not responsible for these pay cuts.

  This is where I suppose the cross cultural misunderstanding sets in. Growing up, industrial action was explained to me as something people did to a third party in order to force their employers to yield in to some set of demands. It therefore goes without saying that those who suffer are not responsible for creating the conditions that led to the industrial action in the first place.

  I don’t like industrial action in general. I don’t like it because I don’t see how it succeeds apart from a complete disregard for the public; and even then success isn’t guaranteed. In order to be successful, it often demands that the aggrieved do, or at the very least be willing to do something egregious in order to demonstrate their right standing, which is just twisted. In reality, that means that unless it were now impossible to obtain a travel document, or Gardaí refused to arrest anyone, or all health professionals decided that they wouldn’t turn up to work, industrial action by any of the above is not likely to be taken seriously. If it is taken seriously, it is most likely to be thought of as an annoyance and unlikely to serve the interests of those striking. Should providers of essential services refuse to work, on the other hand, the public would rightly turn on them and blame them for the ensuing disaster.

  But what’s a trade union to do? I don’t know. But in a country in which people prize their convenience, I don’t think inconveniently highlighting the plight of the low paid worker will win much sympathy. The trade union might win political capital. Politicians will seek to do the same on the basis of their reactions to the situation. But the passport office worker will almost certainly lose out.

  Then again, in this part of the world, you can’t just fire an entire department for going on strike. So maybe there’s hope.

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• Why we aren’t bothered

  February 28, 2010 @ 11:42 pm | by Bryan

  Breda O’Brien’s disturbing article, What happened to all the missing foreign children? demands, I think, an answer. She asks:

  Are we, as Phil Garland, HSE assistant national director for children and families, suggested, simply racist? … I can only imagine the resources that would be marshalled and the blanket media coverage if Irish children whom I teach went missing. Between 2000 and 2009 a total of 501 migrant children went missing from HSE care. Only 67 have been successfully traced.

  How is it that hundreds of children disappear from the state’s care, and almost no-one takes any notice? Does this simply boil down to racism or some variation of it? Or is it something else; the outworking of the same phenomenon that makes the death of a few individuals in The United States or Western Europe considerably more news worthy than the deaths of scores of poor rural Asians or Africans? The outworking of an accepted, albeit rarely acknowledged human life value index? The same index which confers some missing children and their families near celebrity status while leaving others in their anonymity?

  Maybe what’s really at work has more to do with the same things that allowed children to be abused by priests for so many years. Could it be that Irish culture, like many traditional African cultures, has an aversion to the discussion of unpleasant topics? Maybe, for the sake of ‘peace’, or something like that, we just don’t like to disturb the many with the difficulties of a few? And perhaps the secular variant of that culture is what informs the prevailing attitude towards gang violence, and criminality in general: provided it is contained, so long as it does not spill over into the nice parts of town or affect innocent people – while it remains out of sight in other words – we seem to be perfectly capable of living with the scourge.

  Before we collectively lost our minds, before power and the pursuit of material gain intoxicated much of Zimbabwe, people generally held the view that life was sacred. For some, this went so far as to believe that the lack of respect for the sanctity of life leads to all sorts of calamities, personal and collective, ranging from natural disasters like drought, to things like financial ruin.

  That a lack of respect for human life leads to ruin has been upheld in Zimbabwe. I think the same can be said for Ireland. Had the nation taken time out from its frenzied pursuit of development, progress, and wealth in order to look for missing children, to deal with allegations of clerical abuse, to focus on crime and the factors that give rise to criminality, and the like; had the priorities been different, who knows? There may never have been a financial collapse, or even a housing bubble for that matter. But as things stand, several hundred missing foreign children aren’t nearly as important as a few hundred potential Ryanair jobs, or speculation on the extent of the dysfunctionality of the FF/Green marriage. Not in Zimbabwe, Ireland, or very many places for that matter.

  That being the case, if the old folks back home are to be believed, we should all brace ourselves for disaster. Or, if you prefer Hobbes:

  Seeing every man, not only by Right, but also by necessity of Nature, is supposed to endeavor all he can, to obtain that which is necessary for his conservation; he that shall oppose himself against it, for things superfluous, is guilty of the war that thereupon is to follow.

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• In whose name?

  February 24, 2010 @ 3:10 pm | by Bryan

  

  PSNI forensic experts at the scene of Monday night’s car bomb attack outside Newry courthouse in Co Down. Photograph: Reuters/Cathal McNaughton.

  I drove past the odd police checkpoint and had to follow a few diversions as I was going through Newry last night. Having listened to news reports on the bombing, read newspaper articles, seen photographs, and having caught a glimpse of what this sort of attack means for directly affected communities through Pól Ó Muirí’s Daddy, there’s a bomb scare blog post, I’m confused.

  In his Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela is candid about his role in the perpetration of what the apartheid government might have called ‘acts of terror’. In Mandela’s defence, a case can probably be made for attacking the infrastructure of an oppressive regime when such acts are supported by the majority.

  Maybe it’s just ignorance on my part – ignorance of Irish history and Northern politics – but I really don’t understand the justification behind the Newry court bombing. I don’t understand how actions that do not have the support of the majority, that are more likely to lead to political disengagement that engagement, can be cloaked under the banner of republicanism, dissident or otherwise.

  When those who had planted the bomb celebrated their success, I wonder in whose name they thought they were celebrating?

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• Reflections on Sr. Ncube and Dan Boyle

  February 22, 2010 @ 4:08 pm | by Bryan

  I had the pleasure of listening to broadcaster Eamon Dunphy have a go at Green Party chairman Dan Boyle on radio last week. The Greens, Dunphy contended, have sold out. Not only has the party that was elected on the back of promises to change the prevailing political culture learnt to live with it, Dunphy alleged that the same party now actively legitimises that culture by keeping their government partners in office. For his part, Boyle seemed to concede quite a bit to Dunphy. He mumbled something about being pragmatic, change being slow, the Green party being an unusual kind of political animal that can survive outside the Dáil if need be, and so forth. But for all of that, it sounded to me like Boyle, at some level, agreed with Dunphy.

  That radio exchange reminded me of South Africa’s 1996 parliamentary vote on the Termination of Pregnancy Bill. The ruling ANC wanted to enact legislation allowing, among other things, pregnant women of less than 12 weeks gestation access to a medical abortion. To ensure that this legislation was passed, the party refused its parliamentarians the option of voting their conscience, except in some specific circumstances. Commenting on that decision, party whip Geoff Doidge said, “I’ve been taught that abortion is wrong. But I am in Parliament as an ANC MP. People voted in 1994 for the ANC, not for Geoff Doidge. I’m not there as a Catholic MP, but as an ANC MP. In terms of that I must follow party discipline.” Catholic nun and fellow ANC member, Sister Ncube, obviously agreed with Doidge. She voted for the bill.

  I’m not sure how much distance there is between a member of a political party, like Sr. Ncube, and the junior partner in a coalition government. In the same way that Ncube relied on the ANC for whatever power she had to act on behalf of her constituents, Dan Boyle and the rest of the Greens seem to think they need Fianna Fáil to make Ireland a greener nation. I’m not sure if that is the result of political immaturity, or if that is just the nature of coalition and compromise. Could the Greens have got more from their government partners, or is it just the nature of political engagement that the weaker gradually morphs into something very much like the stronger?

  Should the likes of Sr Ncube and the Green Party even get into politics? I’m not questioning whether or not they should be involved with the political process or whether they should try to see certain laws passed or otherwise. But I can’t help but wonder if membership of a political party requires a type of political ‘agnosticism’. People who don’t believe in anything, at least not passionately, and not publicly, aren’t going to have to juggle their political roles with their activist ones. Maybe politicians should be like civil servants – bureaucrats who submit their own predilections for the will of ‘the people’?

  And maybe that’s why Fianna Fáil have been so successful. They are a little like your bland bureaucrat who won’t let ideology or values get in the way of things; who is happy to do whatever you ask of her, within reason. And maybe that’s why substantively, there is very little between the mainstream parties. Maybe they all realise that elected office is no place for believers; that those who enter will be stripped of those beliefs?

  Scripture asks, “What shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” Similarly, my question for Boyle, Ncube and other like them is this: is political power worth attaining if attaining it means compromising things that are fundamental to who you are?

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• Indifferent

  February 19, 2010 @ 5:53 pm | by Bryan

  

  Maybe it’s just me. Maybe being enveloped in a wave of indifference when all sorts of exciting things are happening in the political world is a natural response to sharing a room with an infant with no respect for the sanctity of sleep. Then again, I did resolve not to bug out, or to be taken by buggin’ out this year.

  I almost feel sorry for the now former minister of defence. Others have done worse at better times and have escaped unscathed. Were Mr O’Dea’s fate the first fruits of a new ethical season in political circles, there would be something to celebrate. As things stand, all that has happened is that the opposition’s sustained pressure on the coalition government’s junior partner has necessitated some blood letting, and O’Dea happened to be in the firing line at the wrong time.

  But what has changed? Cabinet ministers will watch what they say in front of journalists. O’Dea has the good fortune of not having to be on the forefront of what must be the mammoth task of helping his political party claw its way back up into contention for the next election; not to mention the responsibilities of running a government ministry. The Greens will keep trying to pretend that they still bear some resemblance to the activists who entered government two and a half years ago, all the while morphing more rapidly into an entity very much like their new big brother. And most of the electorate will, after complaining very bitterly about how the country is being run, remain largely indifferent to issues of governance; few will be moved enough to act, change or do something else. All of these things can be summarised in the words of a caller on RTE Radio 1’s Liveline this afternoon, who expressed disgust at O’Dea’s resignation. He said words to the effect of, ‘We need men of action in government. Why did they make Willie O’Dea resign? It’s like they’re trying to turn us into Sweden, expecting things to happen properly here!’

  I’m sure many people would like this country to resemble Sweden a little more, but I’m not sure we make the connection made by that caller. Replacing personalities, be they the minister of defence, the Taoiseach, or the entire government, won’t change a country. Only changing its culture will do that. Yesterday’s resignation and the events which precipitated it were in keeping with our political culture. Hence my indifference.

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• Michael v Mary

  February 17, 2010 @ 11:06 pm | by Bryan

  

  Tánaiste Mary Coughlan makes a phone call in her office following her meeting last night with Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh.

  The spat between the Tánaiste and Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary is fascinating. It begs the question, who is more powerful, a bunch of elected politicians, or a businessman with the capacity to create lots of jobs?

  Granted, the playing field is uneven in that we are in a recession and jobs count for a whole lot more than they normally would. Also, there isn’t very much goodwill towards politicians right now. So maybe it’s wrong to read too much into the fact that, from what I can tell, the consensus is that O’Leary is right and the government is made up of ditherers who either don’t care enough, or are too incompetent to get a handle on the jobs situation.

  I come to this issue with my own bias. I think the market dictates the range of options available to politicians. The market in my opinion, is really just the interests of those in society with the most capital. Simply put, while the likes of the Tánaiste get fancy titles and all sorts of administrative responsibilities, people like O’Leary are the ones who really run things.

  But maybe I’m wrong. If Michael O’Leary was really that powerful, he probably wouldn’t have had to take his beef with Mary Coughlan into the public realm. He’s thrashing her there, but maybe the fact that there’s even a fight means that the O’Learys of this world aren’t quite as powerful as I thought?

  …unless of course this spat precipitates the fall of the government. The rest of the political establishment is well and truly behind O’Leary in this matter. The ability to replace a government with like-minded politicians would be a most impressive display.

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