Pat Rabbitte: Donnelly and his fellow ministers need the vaccine rollout to work

In the teeth of a pandemic, the government cannot be blamed for the slow vaccine rollout, but any new missteps will not be forgiven by an increasingly critical public

If public life were no longer to attract a share of the most able in our community, the carousel of criticism and ridicule would get worse and our society would pay the price

Reports that the state has intervened to build a wall around the domestic dwelling of Stephen Donnelly, the Minister for Health, are not a good omen.

This kind of thing happened once before, in the early 1980s at the time of the Gubu government, when a perimeter wall was constructed around the home of Seán Doherty, the then justice minister. That government lasted only ten months.

When the flagship RTÉ programme Today Tonight travelled to ...