Ireland left the room poor, holy and apologetic. It came back rich, righteous and remarkably sure of itself. On paper, it's one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In practice, approaching a million people circle hospital waiting lists, a generation struggles to afford a home, government expands while delivery remains strangely elusive, and a vast 'non-governmental' sector depends heavily on government money while helping to write the script. Ireland has also become rather confident in explaining its moral obligations, to itself and occasionally to everyone else. Patrick Duffy left Ireland young and has spent much of the past thirty-five years as both emigrant and immigrant: close enough to care, far enough away to notice when the furniture moved. He has also spent three decades running, studying and researching organisations, including government and public institutions. That gives this book its particular question: what happens when what an institution says it is delivering and what people actually experience stop matching? Across twelve satirical, evidence-led chapters, Duffy follows that question through Ireland's peculiar economic success, public-sector 'capability', the State-funded NGO world, housing and health, land and forestry, immigration, increasingly convergent politics, Brussels and its expanding vocabulary of 'obligations', and Ireland's newer moral certainties. What emerges is less a collection of failures than a recurring trick. The lefty leprechaun holds the gold: money, authority, expertise or public trust. The wish is granted, technically, through another strategy, programme, review, consultation or declaration of progress, while the thing people actually wanted remains strangely elusive. The champagne paddy raises a glass to the granting. This isn't a hunt for villains and it requires no conspiracy. The more interesting question is why Ireland, among its Western peers, seems particularly susceptible to this arrangement: why institutions so
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