Introduction

The Government has already taken decisive steps to ensure that it will join the increasing ranks of the worst the country has known. the composition of the Cabinet and the Programme for Government are resolute commitments in that direction.

The second Haughey Government has been like the last months of the Nixon administration. It has stumbled from crisis to crisis, some of its own making, others occurring by the strokes of cruel luck. The Government was fated to fall sooner or later. It was sooner.

"This election provided an opportunity to win the kind of specific mandate for the radical action that is needed to resolve the national crisis..this has not happened and Fine Gael is primarily to blame.."

There is an inbuilt bias in the constituency size and boundary redrawing of 1980 in favour of Fine Gael.

The public is entitled to know precisely what it is voting for in the case of each of the political parties.

In his judgement on the Nicky Kelly appeal in the Supreme Court on Friday, October 29, the Chief Justice, Tom O'Higgins, said: "It is seldom that the appelate jurisdiction of our courts has been so fully exercised but it is proper that it should have been so in order to satisfy the requirements of justice." While Tom O'Higgins is deserving of respect not just because of his position but because of the distinction he has brought to the role as chief justice, the comment could hardly have won commendation from anyone who has followed the Nicky Kelly case.

The Labour Party conference is likely to exclude the possibility of another Coalition after the next election, unless a major effort is made to reverse the trend of delegates' support by the Labour Party establishment in the weeks leading up to the conference in Salthill on October 23 and 24.

The country is on the brink of economic and social collapse and yet the obsessive topic of conversation over the past few weeks has been an issue far removed from the country's primary interest and often exaggerated beyond all proportion or relationship with reality.

The results of an investigation by Magill into the background to the Connolly affair reveal that: