I remember being in a restaurant in Paris when an English family next to us, frustrated by the studied indifference of the waiter, ended up roaring at ever-higher decibel levels: “Want Coke and chips!” They had learned that if foreigners didn’t understand them then they just needed to shout louder.

But let’s not be condescending here: in Ireland we have elevated this lesson into our principal form of governance.

Governments in Ireland now have undreamed-of power. The State will spend about €150 billion this year – wealth beyond imagination even a decade ago. Yet along with this immense power comes a kind of learned helplessness, shaped by a conjunction of four different factors.

First, there’s an inherited fatalism. The history of the State has been one of relatively good periods followed by deep crisis. Good times are innately temporary. Most recently, of course, the hubris of the Celtic Tiger years was followed by the nemesis of the banking and property crash. The State itself failed – Ireland in effect lost its sovereignty.

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At some level, the political and administrative systems still expect failure: things will fall apart. This expectation creates a weirdly contradictory mindset, a strange mixture of conservatism and........

© The Irish Times