Picking up on a small point today that I think goes to the heart of Irish politics. On this comment by Mattie McGrath in the Dail. 1/n https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1339181163768909826

And lots of people tutting at him. The hospital in question was mostly used for respite care and hospice type care. The government promised in March that it would reopen. It was closed to act as a surge center for Covid cases 2/n

Carrick as a town has been on its knees for decades. People of the town feel they've been lied to. Probably because they have. Mattie, for everything people give out about him, is effective at getting things sorted for people 3/n

If our society functioned better people wouldn't need TDs to act as county councillors to get their basic rights sorted for them. But it doesn't and they do. So people are not very trusting of the system. for obvious reasons. 4/n

There is also talk locally of a private center that is due to open that will provide some of these services so many people rightly or wrongly see that a public good is closed and "a private clinic that lots of doctors are shareholders in" is replacing it 5/n

You tear at the threads of things long enough and the fabric begins to unravel. I assume that this is why Healy-Raes and others get elected. I assume that any independent who gets and stays elected is serving a critical need for their constituency 6/n

So you do wonder at the mockery in certain circles at these politicians and a lack of curious enquiry at the needs that they serve. Its easy to dismiss it as parochialism but its incurious. 7/n

And its also corrupting and corrosive of politics and political engagement at a national level 8/n

The irony here is that it will take national action and national policy to resolve these problems. I wrote a little bit about that here https://congregation.ie/where-do-we-call-home-in-society-3-0-33-cong20/ 9/9