Why is Ireland so badly governed? To grasp the biggest structural explanation for why a state with an embarrassment of riches can’t get its act together to solve fundamental long-term problems, let’s consider three apparently unrelated vignettes.

The first is members of the Oireachtas, up to and including Ministers, pestering the Road Safety Authority to bump their constituents up the waiting list for driving tests.

Recently, The Irish Times revealed a 93 per cent year-on-year increase in emails to the RSA from public representatives, a large proportion of which were “looking for a test date for a constituent or for an update on a constituent’s driving test application”.

Among those asking for favourable treatment for constituents were Ministers for State Alan Dillon (who is supposed to be in charge, among other things, of the circular economy); Michael Healy-Rae (responsible for policy on forestry and horticulture); and Colm Brophy, who evidently has little to be doing in his day job as Minister of State for Migration.

Bear in mind that what these Ministers – and various TDs and Senators – have been asking the RSA to do is grossly unethical and could even be illegal. Or at least it would be if they actually believed that it was going to have an effect. If the RSA complied with these requests, it would not just be giving an advantage to the individual concerned but, by definition, further delaying some poor unfortunate bumped down the waiting list. It would be a textbook case of maladministration.

But the RSA won’t actually do this – and........

© The Irish Times