Pat Rabbitte: Post-pandemic era will bring a new politics

The state in which Fianna Fáil emerges from the current government will determine the outcome of its rivalry with Sinn Féin

Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader: the hegemony enjoyed for so long by his party was demolished after the financial crash of 2008

Predictions are difficult, especially if they are about the future. What will be the shape of our politics when the fallout from the pandemic works its way through our society? The stolid monochrome stability that characterised it until relatively recently is gone forever.

Wider educational attainment, the collapse of respect for the institutional Catholic Church and the legacy of the financial crash of 2008 ended the old structure. Throw in the impact of Brexit, not ...