from reading many articles on the recession and how we got here, i have come to the conclusion that the fundamental problem in ireland is a lack of authority at government and civil level level. Our system is set up so that nobody has any real authority, rules are not set in concrete and can be bent. The authotity the church had has not been replaced by anything.Indeed the scandals in the church happened because of weak governments not having real authority and the church stepped into the vacuum. I think our electoral system whereby it is difficult for any government to get a majority is a major problem. We have had too many weak coalition governments unable to make any real changes. I think ireland is too democratic and people will not listen to the truth. If a politician attempts to tell the truth he gets it at election time. Why are labour getting so much support in the polls, because they will not tell people the truth, and because people will not listen to the truth. If any party is truly radical and is prepared to make big changes their support goes down, look at fine gael. Eamon Gilmore is doing what bertie did before him ie obfuscation and like bertie he is benefitting in the polls. However if we had system like the british system then labour would get an overall majority at the next election. But i think that would be a good thing because then labour would have to take responsibility for their decisions, and people would have to take responsibility in the polling booths because their vote would have a bigger effect in determining governments. Also strong governments would not be under the influence of vested interests unlike our weak coalition governments