Patience wears thin on Government inaction

THINGS seem to be fierce, shocking, terrible, for the Government, altogether. It is looking increasingly as if, overnight, a malign curse has descended, rendering them all hurlers on the ditch. Recently our benighted Taoiseach Leo Varadkar found the rise in homeless people to 10,000 “extremely disturbing”. “What we are not seeing is the results we would like to see. That is unbelievably frustrating and even more so for those who are homeless,” he lamented.

Today, we report on how desperate people trying to get a roof over their heads are sleeping out to buy homes off the plans. Instead of wringing his hands over the housing emergency, the Taoiseach needs to show he runs the Government, and start delivering.

If there is progress he is quick to take the credit, when there is failure he must act, or take the consequences.

Poor Paschal Donohoe seems similarly stricken. The Finance Minister was beating the Central Bank about the head yesterday for not protecting the consumer interest. If he feels the financial watchdog is more poodle than bloodhound, let he and the Government sort it out.

Taking office does not come with an exemption from responsibility. The Government must disabuse itself of the notion that its role is to audition to play the Opposition in a ha’penny farce. It does not have the luxury of inaction.

Winston Churchill despaired of the state of politics in Britain before the war. Railing against the lethargy, he wrote: “So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift.”

With some 28,046 homes in mortgage arrears and hundreds waiting for hospital treatment every week, we need to see real results in solving problems, and not just rearranging them.

Public patience with a Government whinging about faults it was elected to fix has long been spent.