This is about much more than one individual but the Taoiseach needs to be front and centre in addressing this challenge, writes Malcolm Byrne. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times
I am in politics to get things done and I joined Fianna Fáil as it was always the party that got things done. That spirit shaped the vision of those women and men who gathered to establish the party in May 1926.
It drove the mass slum clearance and home building drive of the 1930s. It fostered the investment in free second level education in the 1960s and the expansion of further and higher education from that decade on that underpins our economic success today.
It made us determined to join and influence the development of what is now the European Union and our commitment to Ireland playing an active part in a rules based global order in pursuit of peace, co-operation and free and fair trade.
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