Of course, lots of people feel they should be doing better in one way or another but international comparisons show that this country is one of the best places on earth to live. The relatively comfortable circumstances in which the vast majority of us live are due to the way the politicians and public servants have over a number of decades created the conditions for the prosperous modern Irish state to emerge.

Lynch in an interview after his win referred to the two Arts Council bursaries he had received during the four years it took him to write the book and he remarked that “none of this would be possible without the support of the Irish State”. What might have seemed far-fetched a week ago may not appear so now.

The book portrays an Ireland of the near future where a totalitarian nationalist regime has taken control and all the freedoms we currently take for granted have vanished. One bit of good news last weekend was that the Irish writer Paul Lynch won the prestigious Booker Prize for his brilliant and frightening novel Prophet Song. She dismissed Mary Lou McDonald’s call for resignations by pointing out that the Sinn Féin leader had “welcomed.into her party” Jonathan Dowdall, “a torturer.who helped facilitate murder.” The redoubtable Heather Humphreys met this form of attack head on when she told the Dáil on Wednesday night that she was “sickened” by Sinn Féin lecturing people about the rule of law. The immediate rush by Sinn Féin and other Opposition parties to blame the violence and thuggery on the Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner and call for their resignations, it is symptomatic of how shallow political debate has become. If the default setting of Opposition politicians and much of the media is that everything about this country is wrong, can it be any surprise that a small group of extremists and the local criminal fraternity took advantage of a tragedy to wreak havoc. The contempt for civilised values displayed by the rioters in Dublin last week echoes in extreme form the pervasive narrative that has taken a grip on public discourse over the past few years portraying this country as a failed state.

Betson industries