It's over bar the severe shouting.

A few points to ponder.
1.The electorate took revenge on Fianna Fail/Greens/P.D.s in the last election.
2.Nobody is impressed when current Government members try to evade responsibility for their own actions by constantly referring to what the last lot did.We know what they did and have punished them for it.
Man (or woman )up and have the courage to take it on the chin for your own decisions.
3.Have the decency to stop playing the peasant to the Germans.Either you are a Sovereign Government or you are not.If you are not just say that it's all over,that the dream of sovereignty is dead and gone and we are just a slave nation.And that that is how the German Parliament has your VAT proposals before our own Dail has them.
On which issue, will the custodian of the Constitution ,our new President have anything to say on the sidelining of our elected representatives on the issue.
On to more general issues.
Anybody with an eye in their head can see the accelerated decline of rural and Provincial Ireland.The game is up for these areas as things are.Any attempt to increase VAT rates will just destroy it more completely and rapidly than heretofore.
The Government should consult its rural members before it even contemplates any such rises.
The consensus of the Drumbeat staff is that it's all over anyhow ,just that official figures have not yet picked it up.
AS grandfather of 10 young kids it kills me to admit to myself that it has come to this.