The Irish government has long perfected the perverse tradition of appointing the worst possible person for the job — not by accident, but by design. If there were an inquiry into brain surgery, they’d bypass every qualified neurosurgeon in the country and hand it to a carpenter — not for his knowledge, but for his loyalty to the party and his talent for steering conclusions toward whatever fiction best suits the cabinet.
Of course, they’ll slap a neurosurgeon on the panel for optics, a white coat for the photo op, and a brain scan to nod at credibility. But make no mistake: the carpenter calls the shots. His job isn’t to understand — it’s to outvote, overrule, and ultimately overwrite the truth.
The whole thing plays out like a pantomime. At the critical moment, the actual expert resigns abruptly, departing without explanation, having realised — too late — that the carpenter is the real authority here. Not on medicine, but on the national sport: Political Farce — an area in which Ireland now boasts world-class expertise.
The Road Safety Authority is the kind of institution that puts the word “safety” in its name for irony. Not a single road safety expert in sight—just a cast of has-beens and never-weres: a failed politician in charge, flanked by accountants, marketing spin merchants, and a few doctors with no expertise in traffic systems. The result? Road fatalities are up, but not to worry—the RSA is busy lecturing the public in condescending radio ads, because nothing says “we’ve got this” like a PowerPoint and a finger wag.
Over at the National Children’s Hospital, the financial black hole continues to expand. What was once a healthcare project has mutated into the most expensive building in the known universe. The budget ballooned, the plans unravelled, and the contractors couldn’t believe their luck—paid handsomely for every botched drawing and last-minute change. And who was minding the shop? Appointees of the Minister for Health—none of whom had the foggiest idea how to build a doghouse, let alone a hospital. But they wore suits and nodded solemnly in meetings, so that’s alright then.
As for Dr. Jim Browne, he’s an engineer by training, not a medical doctor—though you wouldn’t know it by the way he chaired Children’s Health Ireland. When a damning Health and Information Quality Authority (HIQA) report exposed a system that allowed unapproved spinal implants in children, Browne resigned, presumably to spend more time not reading governance guidelines. It was a catastrophe mislabelled as an oversight. But those familiar with his record weren’t surprised. As President of NUI Galway, he presided over a decade of glossy brochures and back-slapping awards. But it was his role with the Galway University Foundation—a so-called charity—that revealed his real flair: high-end travel on charitable Euros. Business-class flights, five-star hotels, lavish taxi rides, and generous travel perks for his wife—because nothing says “philanthropy” like burning through donor funds at the Shangri-La and Grand Hyatt in Singapore.
When the Irish government accidentally appoints someone competent to lead an investigation, its first instinct is to smother them in red tape and sabotage. Justice Mary Laffoy is the textbook example. After three years of being stonewalled and undermined, she finally walked away, citing “a real and pervasive sense of powerlessness” and bluntly stating that the government had never properly enabled the Commission to do its job. Translation: she was appointed to give the illusion of justice — not to pursue it.
The Mother and Baby Homes Commission nearly resigned en masse, on several occasions, exasperated by constant ministerial meddling and political pressure. They stayed just long enough to deliver the final report, then vanished like stagehands after a grim performance. Unsurprisingly, they refused to spend the next decade defending a report that didn’t find the abuse and murder the government had quietly hoped it would. When the evidence didn’t align with the hysteria, the State shifted to its backup plan: blame the investigators.
Watching elites whirl themselves into hysterical little tizzies is entertaining — until they turn their bile on the Irish people. Not just the nation, but their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles — the whole lineage of souls unfortunate enough to carry the label, Irish. According to them — a tiny cabal of academics, the politicians, the media lapdogs — we were once a nation of moral defectives, magically cured by their own radiant intelligence. It’s not history they’re peddling; it’s a power trip. They need us ashamed, confused, and apologising for crimes we never committed, because that’s the only way their brittle egos can stay inflated. Aloof, smug, and parasitic — they claw at the past to feed their sense of superiority.
Nowhere is the ignorance and incompetence of today’s Irish politicians more grotesquely exposed than in the shameless gaslighting of their own nation over the mother and baby homes. Too dim to grasp that their sanctimonious sneering insults their own families, neighbours, and ancestors, they parade their ignorance as virtue. Blissfully unaware, they mouth off with the smugness of colonised minds, blind to Ireland’s most enduring national pastime — self-loathing, repackaged as moral superiority. They don’t just betray the truth; they spit on it, then ask for applause.
Just over a century ago, Ireland was ruled by a racist, anti-Irish government. Today, we’ve come full circle — only this time, the contempt comes wrapped in a tricolour. These aren’t merely bad politicians; they are a mortifying disgrace. Snivelling careerists with colonial minds, sneering at their own people to win applause from foreign observers. They don’t serve Ireland — they apologise for it. They are not leaders. They are an Embarrassment. A crawling, craven echo of the very tyrants our ancestors once fought to be free from.
EJ
