Micheál Martin and Paschal Donohoe are responsible for this Government's lethargy

The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance are the key members of this Government, but they are hardly its driving force.
These dynamics matter because we have a Government with power but so far neither the will nor the cohesion to deliver. All the while the world is changing rapidly and our exposure to events is growing.
Micheál Martin
scooped the entire electoral dividend available to the two Government parties in the last election. He has complete mastery over
Fianna Fáil
, but having arrived where he wanted to be over decades, he now seems unable to exercise power effectively.
Paschal Donohoe
is the principal Fine Gael presence in Cabinet by default. He is the crutch his leader
Simon Harris
reached for in a disastrous election campaign. He is indispensable in a diminished
Fine Gael
, yet he seems unable to exert the fiscal discipline and effective delivery of infrastructure the country needs.
READ MORE
Harris was permanently damaged by that election campaign and he still confuses creating distraction with effective action. Minister for Public Expenditure
Jack Chambers
has a claim to consideration as a force at the centre of Government. It is too soon to say for sure, but nothing yet indicates he is.
The annual National Economic Dialogue on Monday
offered a good analysis of the challenges we face
. Tariffs and the fragmentation of the global trading system could have far-reaching consequences for the Irish economy.
Foreign-owned multinationals account for 84 per cent of corporation tax revenue and around half of income tax and VAT paid by all companies in Ireland. The narrowness of our tax base means that €9 in every €10 received last year came from income tax, corporation tax and VAT.
Unlike other rich countries, , we don't do any other taxes on property or wealth in scale sufficient to make a real contribution or to provide a cushion in a downturn. That is a mistake we have made before and will regret again.
Worse, this Government has shrunk our domestic tax base further. In 2019, 30 per cent of income earners did not pay income tax or USC. This year that is expected to rise to 33 per cent. This would not pass for prudence in Las Vegas.
In the meantime the
Irish Fiscal Advisory Council
estimates that Ireland's infrastructure is 25 per cent lower than average for a high-income European country. Inadequacies in water supply, sewerage and the electricity grid are barriers to building homes.
Government spending more than doubled in a decade. This year spending is rapidly outpacing what was provided for in the budget last October and, oddly, the
Department of Public Expenditure
is not publishing monthly expenditure reports.
Opening the National Economic Dialogue, the Taoiseach warned of 'unprecedented challenges', called for 'courage and ambition' and said we must prepare by 'controlling the controllables'.
But what is out of control is under his authority.
This is the cumulation of a decade-long, ongoing spending splurge and the failure to reform or lead the public sector. Donohoe is the continuous thread in the decline of purpose in our economic management, which, aside from our response to Covid-19, characterises that time. He accommodated skilfully under three party leaders and made the improbable plausible at a cost to the country.
He seems unwilling and unavailable to engage in the combat required for cultural change and fiscal discipline in a system he too seldom challenged.
In contrast to Donohoe, whose highest promotion may still be ahead, politically this is the moment of maximum Micheál Martin. Apart from 10 days in January 2011 after he resigned from Brian Cowen's cabinet and before he became leader of Fianna Fáil, he has been on his party's front bench for 30 years, its leader for 14 and in government for 19 in all.
He has served his ambition by laying off risk rather than taking it on. Constantly frustrated by the system he presides over, he is also unwilling to take it on. His department is no longer the control room of that wider system which openly disparages the departments of Public Expenditure and Housing as institutionally inadequate.
But the Taoiseach will not take control. Off-laying responsibility rather than taking on risk is his preferred route, Ministers – not the Taoiseach – are made to be collateral damage.
By dint of dysfunction, we have an asymmetrical power structure in Government that intensifies the limitations of its principals. There are pockets of energy in departments such as Health, Justice, Higher Education and Enterprise. But as a whole, it is characterised by lethargy. Watching each other is preferred to working together. Our best hope is that another crisis might provoke an adequate response.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Irish Times

23 minutes ago

• Irish Times

Irish ports handle 12.9m tonnes of goods in the first quarter

Irish ports handled 12.9 million tonnes of goods in the first quarter. That is 7 per cent ahead of the same period last year, data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows. However, the latest numbers include traffic through Greenore, Co Louth, as a main statistical port for the first time. That, the CSO pointed out, skews comparisons with previous data. Greenore joins Bantry Bay, Cork, Drogheda, Dublin, Rosslare, Shannon Foynes, and Waterford as one of the State's main ports. Under international guidelines, main statistical ports are categorised as those that have exceeded handling one million tonnes of goods or 200,000 passengers each year for a consecutive three-year period. READ MORE Goods forwarded from Irish ports were up 5 per cent to four million tonnes, while goods received rose 8 per cent to nine million tonnes. Irish ports hosted 2,557 vessels during the period compared with 2,488 during the same months last year. Dublin Port accounted for 1,478 (58 per cent) of those, and for 6,046 (47 per cent) of the total tonnage handled. Britain and Northern Ireland accounted for 3,794 (29 per cent) of the total tonnage handled, while EU countries accounted for 6,208 tonnes (48 per cent).

Irish Times

37 minutes ago

• Irish Times

Lottery Q&A: What are my odds and does it matter where I buy a ticket?

The shop that sold this week's winning EuroMillions ticket has been announced, has it? It has indeed. Clifford's Centra on Shandon Street in Cork City supplied the record-breaking €250 million ticket. Good for them. Do they get a big windfall too? Well, big is relative, isn't it? A shop that sells a winning ticket does indeed get a cash bonus from the National Lottery , with the amount depending on the nature of the winning ticket. A place that sells a winning Lotto ticket gets €15,000, falling to three grand if they sell a Lotto Plus 1 and €2,000 if they sell a Lotto Plus 2 ticket. Yeah, but they must really hit pay dirt if they sell a €250 million winner, right? Meh. The size of the cash sum given to shops for any particular lottery is the same no matter the jackpot. For selling a winning EuroMillions ticket, the Shandon Street Centra will collect €25,000. It is not to be sniffed at for sure but it is 0.01 per cent of the jackpot. What makes some of the prizes even less lavish than they first appear is that they have to be shared among shops if there is more than one winner. What do you mean? Well, it doesn't apply in this case, as there was just one winning ticket sold, but if a Lotto or EuroMillions jackpot is shard among two or more ticket holders, then the resulting cash the shops get must also be shared. READ MORE Still, better than nothing. Now, enough about the shops, let's get back to me. I didn't win the EuroMillions but is that because I bought my ticket in the wrong shop? Well, it is worth noting that the odds of winning the EuroMillions jackpot are 140 million to one against, which means you are far more likely to be struck by lightning several times. Mind you, the odds of you being born and able to read this sentence were around four trillion to one and yet that happened. But to get back to your question, the odds stay the same no matter where you buy your ticket although, there do appear to be some shops that are luckier than others. [ Graham Norton's pad and a trip to space: what else could Ireland's newest EuroMillions winner buy with €250m? Opens in new window ] I'm all ears ... Okay, so, there are quite a few shops in line for the title of the luckiest in Ireland. One of the top contenders is Carey's newsagents in Belmullet, Co Mayo. At the end of 2024 it sold the winning ticket for a jackpot worth just under €5.4 million. Back in 2017, one of its customers won €370,000, while in the same year another person – well, we have to hope they were different people – won €1 million in the Daily Million drawn. A year earlier it sold a jackpot-winning ticket worth just under €14 million while in 2015, a customer won the EuroMillions Plus top prize of €500,000. Then there was the €350,000 Lotto Plus 1 ticket it sold in 2012 and another jackpot-winning ticket worth €710,000 in 1991. That must be the luckiest shop in Ireland so? It depends on how you do your calculations. In 2005 the GO Stores in Garryowen, Limerick sold a EuroMillions quick pick to Dolores McNamara and she won €115 million. Ah, but that was a one-off, right? Actually no. In April 2024, the very same shop sold a winning ticket worth just under €9 million. Are there any other contenders? There are of course. There is the SuperValu in Bailieborough, which has sold three jackpot-winning tickets worth a total of almost €12 million. Wallaces in the Wexford town of Wellingtonbridge has also sold three tickets, with the cash value of its biggest prizes coming in at about €5 million. And while 13 might be an unlucky number for some, 2013 was a very lucky year for the Tesco in Mullingar, which sold not one but two jackpot-winning tickets worth a total of more than €11 million. That's a lot of lucky shops And there are more. The Centra in Ballybrack might also stake a claim, having sold a €86.7 million jackpot-winning ticket in 2014, while in 2016 a syndicate of friends won more than €66 million after buying a ticket in the Eason's store in the Fairgreen Shopping Centre in Carlow. Eason's in Thurles also sold a €17 million jackpot-winning ticket in 2018. And what about online? It hasn't done great in the EuroMillions stakes so far, with only one winner, who recorded a €49.5 million haul in 2020. So, tell me this, am I better off buying a ticket in a shop that has sold loads of jackpot-winning tickets or one that has never sold any? If the odds of selling one ticket are long, the odds of selling two or three or four must be immeasurably longer? Honestly, it doesn't make the slightest difference. Your odds of winning the EuroMillions will remain at, as we said, 140 million to one no matter where you buy your ticket. The odds of winning the regular Lotto are almost 11 million to one and no amount of superstition or lucky numbers is going to change that fact.

Irish Times

38 minutes ago

• Irish Times

United Airlines expands capacity on routes from Dublin to US

United Airlines will now operate its daily non-stop Dublin to Chicago routes on a year-round basis and has also expanded its second daily New York/Newark route into the winter months. On Friday, the American airline said it will now offer more flights and seats from Dublin Airport than any other US airline. 'This significant expansion further underlines the importance of Dublin within United's global network,' Karolien De Hertogh, United's UK and Ireland sales director, said. 'Our customers in Ireland will benefit from even greater travel choice in the winter season, with the possibility to seamlessly connect via our hubs in New York/Newark, Chicago O'Hare and Washington DC to over 140 destinations in the Americas.' READ MORE It follows the airline's decision to double the number of flights it operates between Dublin and Washington DC this summer from once to twice daily. [ United Airlines to resume Dublin-Washington DC route Opens in new window ] United also recently increased capacity on its Dublin-Chicago route after introducing a new Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft. 'More capacity on United Airlines' services from Dublin to New York's Newark and Chicago O'Hare airports is great news for our passengers,' said Gary McLean, Dublin Airport managing director. 'The move to almost year-round operations for the second daily Newark service and year-round for the daily Chicago flight is a clear signal of the strong demand from our American customers.' United said its expansion will increase its overall seat offering from Dublin to the US by 50 per cent for next year, compared with 2024. The carrier also recent announced new routes from New York/Newark hub to Greenland, Bilbao, Palermo and Madeira Island, all of which are currently not served by other US airlines.