Last week's speech by Noel Dempsey on Irish politics is a most refreshing and, I believe, important contribution to Irish politics by a practising politician.
His indictment of parochialism, clientelism and focus-group-led politics is passionately and cogently argued. It demands, but has yet to receive, a reaction from the leadership not just of his own party but also of all the other political parties represented in Dail Eireann.
In this speech he questions whether politics can survive in Ireland if politicians continue to be dominated by the parish pump at the expense of the national interest. As he points out, kowtowing to this dominant localism has contributed to public attitudes where politics and political life are at their lowest ebb.
Because of the way our TDs operate they have, he says, drawn on themselves a public demand, 70 per cent of which relates to local matters, matters that the State will henceforth be paying someone else to do, viz local politicians. The job of national politicians is quite different, and they should be "told to get on with it".
Dominated by fear of local reactions, he says, politicians have consistently avoided addressing the failure to tackle the imbalance between the growth of Dublin and the rest of the country over many decades, an imbalance that has damaged both parts of our island.
He rightly condemns - as by coincidence I was doing in this column last week - the failure of the politicians of a generation ago to adopt the Buchanan proposals to set up large centres throughout the State to counterbalance the pull of Dublin.
As he says, that report "died a shameful death", simply because politicians feared a backlash from towns not selected for the first stage of this development process. The result of such political cowardice was that "the midlands, south-east, west and Border areas continued to have the life sucked out of them, condemning hundreds of thousands of our young people to lonely bedsits in Dublin or even lonelier places in London, Birmingham, New York or Chicago, and condemned many of those who stayed behind to poverty and hardship".
And, having spoken of the "National Spatial Strategy, currently in the penultimate stages of preparation" (penultimate perhaps meaning that it won't appear until after the election), his recent bitter experiences of multiple failures of political nerve lead him to ask, most disturbingly:
"But will we take this chance? Or will we allow the `divine principle', the parish pump and party politics, to dictate the result, which will once again condemn most of the country to continued stagnation and decline? Will we have learned the lesson of history, or will we repeat it? Sadly, I fear that we may perhaps be no better than our predecessors."
Politics, he points out, is becoming more globalised, with more and more policy being decided in Europe. We have to understand and influence pan-European policy, which "we won't do if we hand that responsibility to parochial popularity seekers so caught up with pot-holes that they're not capable of wider vision".
It is, of course, this preoccupation with local issues that explains why the Dail fails to monitor adequately European legislation in the way that happens elsewhere in Europe, most notably, perhaps, in Britain and Denmark.
Noel Dempsey ruefully recognises that, by using such a word as "vision", he is taking his life in his hands: "You're always safer in this country not talking about the vision thing," which "leads to people thinking that you're losing the run of yourself". But, without a wider vision, politicians become "so immersed in local delivery and local services" that eventually "that kind of politician is ultimately no good, not even to his own community".
He suggests that the successful operation of the DIRT committee has shown that it is possible to make politics work in the public interest. But it's one thing to get together a small group of serious national politicians, and there are, of course, a number of such people in the Dail. It's a different matter to transform the culture of our political system, as he is advocating.
Noel Dempsey knows this all too well, for, as Minister for the Environment and Local Government, he has courageously attempted to do just that on many fronts in the last couple of years.
But on almost every issue he has been blocked by backwoodsmen in his own party, and also by the Independent deputies. This speech has clearly been inspired by his personal political vision, but it must also have been provoked by his intense frustration at his bitter experiences as a minister with a reforming agenda.
He is particularly scathing about the way our politicians seek to follow public opinion, however ill-informed and self-interested, instead of offering leadership.
"In other words, you find out [by focus group] what people will tolerate or not tolerate, and then lead them fearlessly towards what you know they already like. You go out on no limb if you follow that mantra. But you also provide no leadership. I believe we've come to a point where we must shout stop to focus group politics and point towards unpopular possibilities, if they are the right options."
All these things have needed to be said for a long time. Some media commentators have been saying them. And we know that many serious politicians privately agree. But until now there has been no such blunt talk from the Government or the Opposition benches.
Like every politician, operating in a climate where choices between the ideal and the practical constantly have to be made, Noel Dempsey's record is, no doubt, imperfect. His colleagues in the Dail and some commentators will no doubt remind him of such actions as his recent move to benefit his more business-linked party by doubling political spending limits at the forthcoming election.
Nevertheless, in a political environment in which doing the popular thing is highly regarded, while attempts to swim against the popular tide are often sneered at, Noel Dempsey has suffered at the hands of colleagues.
However, among a wider public, his stance is seen as a welcome breath of fresh air in a stale political climate. Noel Dempsey should not be discouraged by his recent experiences.
His courageous speech offers a powerful challenge to the leader not only of his own party but also to the leaders of the main Opposition parties. Will they have the courage to take it up and run with it?
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie