With Budget 2025 upon us, an old phrase comes to mind: more money than sense. The State has an almost surreal surplus of €25 billion. But it has no coherent sense of how to spend it.

Alongside its embarrassment of riches, Ireland is running a large and unsustainable ideological deficit. In one of the weekend’s pre-budget spin stories, we were solemnly informed that there was an “ideological clash” between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over some minor detail – which really would be two bald men fighting over a comb.

Around the beginning of the 21st century, Ireland took a prolonged leave of absence from ideology. Its old self-images were dog-eared and down-at-heel. They were packed away and consigned to the attic of collective identity, not quite out of mind, but largely out of sight.

By then, the State’s ideological model had served its time. It was once a very strong alloy, composed in equal parts of nationalism and Catholicism. These elements were mined from the depths of Irish history and forged through centuries of oppression, humiliation and resistance.

In spite of – or perhaps even because of – the State’s many failures, this fusion of religious and national identities retained its emotional power. In a society continually pulled apart by mass emigration, it offered the compensatory illusions of stability, certainty and comfort. It was conveniently portable – you could hold on to it in the ethnic enclaves of Birmingham or Brooklyn almost as firmly as in Ballina or Ballydehob.

It was also very good at making its own........

© The Irish Times