You have to hand it to some of our politicians, and their sense of priority. A few years ago, when the IMF was camped out in Government Buildings and the Fianna Fail-led coalition was presiding over the collapse of the public finances, the Fianna Fail TD Michael Kennedy complained in the Dail about the lack of bilingual elevators in Leinster House.
Yes, the deputy for Dublin North, where unemployment was rife and incomes are falling, pointed out that the lifts used in our parliamentary complex did not have announcements in Irish.
"I hope when we are told we are either going up or going down in the lift," he quipped, "it will be in the cupla focal."
Six days later, all the lifts in Leinster House had announcements in both English and Irish – something that was long overdue, you'll admit.
Would that Leinster House had moved as quickly on the reform of our political system or on saving the public finances.
A bill, published yesterday by Fine Gael senator Imelda Henry (The Intoxicating Liquor Amendment Bill, 2014), to get pubs opened on Good Friday, is in a similar vein.
Here we are, some years on from the economic disaster presided over by the party of the now politically departed Michael Kennedy, but we are still very much paying the price.
Families wonder how they can make ends meet, and people with distressed mortgages are worried that their homes will be repossessed. But Senator Imelda thinks that we need new legislation to get the pubs opened on Good Friday!
The closure of pubs on Good Friday is an old chestnut.
And yet is it not a testament to just how much this closure is not, in fact, a public issue, that despite the almost complete collapse of organised religion and of Catholic abstinence, the public still does not expect that the pubs should be summarily opened on what is one of the few days when they are not open?
Source: Eamon Delaney, irish Independent, 03/07/14
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