What have the government done right?

Is "awful deals for fishermen" now a crisis, and on what basis?

What have they done right? Their members and lackeys haven't called to my door begging for votes.

But, inevitably like everything else, they'll end up getting that decision wrong too.

Yes, aren't the Japanese responsible for eliminating a few species of whales? Surely that is more of a crisis.

It's a problem in Europe too.

"More than 90 species of marine fishes in Europe's waters are threatened with extinction, according to a report published today by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Sharks, rays, and other cartilaginous fish are at greatest risk, with about 40% facing extinction. The main threat is overfishing, the report warns."

Of course, we could have stayed out of the EU, kept our fisheries and never had the prosperity we now have.

Government bashing is almost as popular as dole bashing on here.

I mean saying that the government has made a mess of housing is a bit simplistic. They haven’t made it better and they deserve blame for what happened on their watch and housing and health was perfect before this, which it wasn’t. Though thankfully that’s not that big a phenomenon on boards.

The Dail and Seanad record has so many references to housing and how bad the hospitals are it’s amazing and it goes back nearly to the first Dail. It’s fascinating how time moves on but some problems in this county have stayed the same throughout.

I think we are in a better situation in the public finances which will hopefully blunt the slowdown that seems to be on the way. I think the government got the initial response to Covid correct. That can’t be said for the reopening back up which was a mess.

Well, the aqueducts

I grew up in the Ireland in the eighties. High unemployment was the norm, infrastructure was woeful, cars were rust-buckets, masses were emigrating, low quality goods and services on the shelves, we wore second-hand clothes as kids, the list goes on and on.

Now we can't move for luxury SUVs on the roads. All we did in the interim was complain and blame the government, but successive administrations did do something right. We went from one of Western Europe's poorest countries, to one of the more well-off countries.

Indeed, we have a lot of problems now, but they are generally "wealthy country" problems, as opposed to "poor country" problems that we had in the eighties and prior.

"We can't move for luxury SUVs on the roads" Most of the country before 2008 was in the same fantasy induced situation where you couldn't move for some person who was basically qualified for nothing but a babysitter job who was being given loans in the bank for upwards of one million Euros to get a house.

That was a "wealthy country problem" back in 2008. Looks like some of you haven't learnt any lessons.

It's an interesting one as there had been some signs of good work up to 2020.

The government was dealing with the challenge presented by Brexit — and for the most part I think they did well on that front. Their maneuvering in conjunction with the EU partners was generally well thought, and the measures taken to safeguard the Irish economy from Brexit fallout (to the extent possible) have not been without merit. There were signs of some ambition re infrastructural development (Ireland 2040) — and while a lot of that now looks blown out of the water, there was some success like the continued push on the Celtic Interconnector project. Socially, things like the modernising of female reproductive rights have been good. This government does also seem to have a better handle on the country's financial situation.

I do however remain of the view that the Irish COVID lockdown strategy — in terms of its length and intensity — was unjustified and disproportionate. The suspension of things that people might otherwise have spent on, combined with suspended construction, have contributed to the situation where we have a wall of savings in this country vying for very few houses. New fault lines of inequality have emerged — for example the emergence of a Working From Home class who retain high city salaries while having the flexibility to live almost anywhere and price others out.

This government's successes have largely centred around the traditional Irish approach of keeping things steady, predictable, doing nothing overly different. But when the sh*t hit the fan, a recurring failure to be brave and radical in addressing really key issues has come back to bite us all.

Keeping full employment and a growing economy in the biggest financial headwinds since 1929.

Keeping investment at a high rate and mitigating the effects of Brexit, which in the not so recent past could have destroyed this Country along with Britain.

Everything else is secondary. Minor details.

I suppose the referendums on Repeal the 8th and Marriage Equality were positives, as well as their handling of the shitstorm that was Brexit.

I also notice a lot of schools have been upgraded from 80s prefabs in recent years.

That's all I have to say about that.