Healy-Rae’s solo run hurt his own national team

Irish politics is by no means unique in its tendency for national politicians to focus primarily on what benefits they can carve out for their local constituencies to ensure their future re-election. What we call parish pump politics is, for example, widely known as pork-barrel politics in the US.

That is as much comfort as we can take. Though we are not alone in electing locally focused politicians, we should not be prepared ...