Whose fuel crisis is this anyway? For some of us the drastic rise in oil and gas prices because of the insane war on Iran causes serious stress. For others, it causes deep distress. Yet in political terms the stressed matter. The distressed? Not so much.

I’ve been writing here recently about the State’s learned helplessness. But consider an even more paradoxical condition: learned ignorance. By which I mean the construction of official knowledge in such a way that some things are deliberately unknown. Studied unawareness is a governing principle.

An obvious example of learned ignorance is the refusal to calculate in State budgets the long-term cost of not doing vital things – not eliminating child poverty, not decarbonising our economy, not building necessary infrastructure.

But this willed obliviousness extends to short-term crises as well. It is very much at work in the Government’s flailing response to the harm Donald Trump’s war is doing to the poorest Irish households right now.

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Ireland’s governing philosophy is learned helplessness – and it is getting worse

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The rise in energy prices affects everyone. There’s plenty of pain to go around. But the misery is, as always, greatest for the people who have least money. When you’re living hand to mouth, an oil crisis is a jerk to your elbow. The choice between eating and heating becomes all too........

© The Irish Times