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The year just passed was an eventful one by any standards. From the establishment of the National Asset Management Agency to the passing of the Lisbon Treaty, from the Murphy report on child abuse in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin to the Copenhagen conference on climate change, it set down some of the parameters for the future. Whereas a year ago the world’s economic system teetered on the edge of catastrophe, it is now seen to have escaped from another Great Depression. At home, the glass can now be seen to be half full (as the Government would wish) or half empty (as its critics insist) but at least there is a balance to be debated between optimism and pessimism instead of unrelieved gloom.

The worst may or may not be over for our prospects over the next couple of years. But we are learning to live with changed circumstances and hopefully picking through the lessons and seeing that going backwards is not an option. One of the factors to come through this year, though, is that all politics is local. It is true in Ireland but it is also true for the world at large as the failures of the Copenhagen conference demonstrated with every nation looking after its self-interest at the expense of the good of mankind.