Ireland and the Kubler-Ross Model of Grief

Irish Policeman Ronan McNamara and presiding electoral officer Hugh O’Donnell carry the ballot box from the ferry on Inishfree Island, off the Donegal coast of Ireland.

It will not surprise you that Myles na Gopaleen had it right: The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at the crossroads. Sadly Myles does not tell us if there would be comely maidens dancing at the crossroads too but there you go.

Today’s Irish election is a queer thing indeed. Many observers have commented on a surprising lack of fury given the scale of the financial burden that must be borne these next ten or more years. Yet a contest in which Fianna Fail’s vote is more than halved and Ireland’s greatest political party reduced to a rabble of just a couple of dozen TDs can’t be said to be an election dominated by apathy.