

Ireland's government

Biffo biffed

One prime minister departs, but his successor may not find life much easier

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Readers' comments



the caption on this is wrong :"the words say it all",
in fact, it does not say "fail" but rather "fáil" (which means opportunity, to get, to pursue in Irish) pronounced "fall"
Obviously the Economist's educated journalists can't notice an acute accent.
In either case, it is nice to see the "knockout punch" delivered to Biffo's government, but it has come much too late.


Ireland will have a difficult time during the Great De-leveraging. It will have to pay down debt. Over-indebtedness is not cured by more debt. That is a lesson still to be learned, apparently the harder way. So sad.

Paddy O'Rourke

Michael Martin is a waster. All he did in health was the smoking ban. Anything that looked slighty controversial was kicked into touch for whoever came next. He didn't win the treaty, fear about the mess we were in did - it might be considered Cowens victory. What did he do in education?.....me neither! For most of his time in Cabinet he did little more than bluff and make pleasing soundbites, and there's no indication that he'll be any different in opposition!
Given a choice between Kenny-lite and Steve Silvermint the correct choice is emigrate!


I'm no huge fan of Micheal Martin but to say he cannot point to much in the way of achievement in office is slightly unfair, especially when comparing him to Brian Cowan.

What did Martin do in the Dept. of Health? Introduced the smoking ban, one of the first countries in the world to do so. What did Cowan do in Health? Nickname it Angola.

What did Cowan do in Foreign Affairs? Lose the Nice referendum. What did Martin do? Win the re-play of the Lisbon referendum (the original of which had partly been lost due to Cowan's pathetic performance as Taoiseach and insulting comments towards the opposition).



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