Pat Leahy (posted by David Farrell, October 28, 2011)

Here is the text of Sunday Business Post’s Pat Leahy’s remarks to the 2011 Kenmare Economics conference

The Irish economic crash has been turbo charged by a profound failure of our politics and our political system to comprehend the economic realities of the world, to be self-aware, to regulate its own desires and ultimately to practise good government

Moreover these failures are represented at every level of the political system, from government ministers to TDs, to the political and wider media that regulate and conduct our national debate, to local authorities to individual voters. They also, I am afraid, extend to economists.

These failures happened not just because of a series of bad policy decisions, but because of something much deeper than that: because they reflect our political culture. Continue reading →