The Dáil rises next week for the Christmas recess. The Taoiseach is off to Brussels for a crucial EU summit, and then to Lebanon to see the troops. The Cabinet will wind up its business for the year on Tuesday, “barring emergencies”. There are lunches to be had and pubs to be crammed into afterwards. So, yes: it’s review of the year time.

Looking back over the year is a useful exercise in political analysis – not just because it forces us to focus on what was important, but because, by extension, it reminds us that a lot of the so-called controversies were actually not all that important after all. Entertaining, certainly. But not of enduring importance. Who now remembers, for example, which Social Democrat got in to trouble this year for blacking up his face a decade and a half ago?

So here are the three things that I think were most important over the course of 2025:

It may seem obvious but perhaps the most important thing to happen was the formation of the new Government in January, following the November 2024 general election. It had been obvious since the votes were counted that Fianna Fáil (triumphant) and Fine Gael (relieved) would be returning to power together. The only question was, would one of the smaller left-wing parties, or a combination of them, replace the decimated Greens as the third element of the new Coalition?

But neither Labour nor the Social Democrats were interested in that. So a group of Independents, co-ordinated by Tipperary TD Michael Lowry, moved in. The combination of Lowry’s involvement, the........

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