TONY SOPRANO FAMOUSLY said that ‘”Remember when?” is the lowest form of conversation.’ This observation seems especially apt when one is trying to remember anything positive that the Irish government has done in the year which now draws to a close. 

If you cast your mind back to the beginning of 2025, you might experience flashbacks of a brief moment in Irish history defined by the phrase ‘Regional Independent Technical Group’ and the image of Michael Lowry giving two fingers while he stares down the barrel of a camera. 

This was before a government was formed, a time when we cast our eyes nervously about and thought: ‘Oh no, but without a government, who will advance a legislative agenda to improve the lives of the Irish people?’ Then they formed a government and, 11 months later, most of us are still asking the same question.

This was a record-breaking year in Irish politics, at least going by the metric of just how little the government actually did. Only 21 bills have been passed by the end of this year, compared to 44 last year. A more forensic assessment of the bills that have been passed will not make you feel as though your quality of life is a central priority of this government. One of those few bills, for example, simply increased the number of minister of state positions available to government TDs. 

This is thematically consistent with Micheál Martin’s second stint as Taoiseach which, as the year wore on, has more or less deteriorated into him going around scowling at anyone who dares to ask him a question about why his government never does anything about anything. 

Martin’s year was defined by his unforgettable contribution to the presidential election, in which he backed a candidate with no political experience, whom he had only met once, who eventually crashed out amid a deficient vetting process, which failed to pick up on Jim Gavin’s unreturned overpayment of rent when he was a landlord. But in fairness to the Taoiseach, he was presumably distracted by making sure that no progress was being made in Dáil Éireann either. 

The stagnation that Ireland has experienced this year is perhaps especially bemusing in light of Fine Gael’s election slogan at the end of 2024, which, if you’ll recall, was, A New Energy. Now, to be fair, they didn’t promise more energy; they just promised a new energy, and it turns out it’s the kind of energy one expounds when one downloads the Couch to 5km app on 1 January before deleting it months later, unused, to make more room for your ‘reduce building standards‘ app. 

2025 saw an evolution in Fine Gael Simon Harris, in the sense that he started speaking about immigration in terms he’d never used before, explicitly saying that immigration into Ireland was ‘too high’. It almost feels unnecessary to point out that public services in housing, healthcare, education and more have lagged well behind public demand for Simon Harris’ entire Dáil career since he was first elected in 2011, and that to blame any such problems on migration levels is transparently cynical. 

It is further noteworthy that Harris’ rhetorical shift on the matter came just days after his own party’s embarrassing and unsuccessful presidential bid, the two highlights of which were Heather Humphreys reacting to coffee as though she’d never encountered it before, and for some reason leaning hard into her defence of foxhunting as a ‘rural pursuit’. 

In what seems a rather apt metaphor for the relative paralysis we are seeing in Dáil Éireann, this was the year we finally saw movement on the Metrolink project. Not movement in the sense of an actual metro moving along actual tracks carrying actual passengers to actual destinations, but movement in the sense that the government has told us it’ll happen someday. 

It seems appropriate that the year ends with the government using public money to buy homes from 19 objectors in Ranelagh only for Manhattan Peanuts Ltd to crash in and raise their own objection to another major transport infrastructure project, the Luas extension to Finglas. 

Now, while the black and gold bag of Manhattan cheese and onion crisps is perhaps the sleekest crisp packaging on the market, it seems fair to speculate that the brand is suffering to some degree from its lack of an equivalent mascot figure to rival the iconic Mr Tayto.

Perhaps we would be more sympathetic to the plight of Manhattan if they had some kind of anthropomorphic peanut man at their helm, perhaps one who wears a waistcoat and dances the Charleston. Think of how effective their anti-Luas propaganda could be if only they could publish an image of this beloved peanut man tied to the tracks. 

The good news is that the Manhattan people have agreed to enter into mediation over their Luas complaint, and assuming it follows the same pattern as what happened in Ranelagh, the government is about to have a whole lot of peanuts and popcorn on its hands, which they will then presumably store in a rainy day fund that we’re not allowed to touch even as we enter the tenth straight year of a peanut crisis. 

While the macro picture might not make for inspiring reading, it is important to note that 2025 was a year in which plenty of individual Irish people showcased the bravery, compassion and wit that we might all aspire to. For example, remember when people were putting all of those cherry tomatoes on that bridge, or that dog that everybody thought was a lion on the loose? Heroes, each and every one.

Beyond that, there were Irish people who bravely sailed to Gaza and were arrested in their attempt to break Israel’s blockade. Similarly, RTÉ finally withdrew from the Eurovision Song Contest over its continued inclusion of Israel. There have been spectacular sporting successes, not least Rory McIlroy’s emotional Masters win, or Shane Lowry’s cathartic putt to clinch the Ryder Cup. Culturally, Ireland continues to thrive with the international successes of CMAT, Kneecap, Fontaines DC, Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley and innumerable others. 

And of course, we’ve all got a heartbreak in Prague to look forward to next year, when Ireland face Czechia in the first phase of our World Cup playoffs. Failing that, there will be a heartbreak in Dublin when we play Denmark (or North Macedonia, to be fair to them). And even if that doesn’t come through, heartbreak in Guadalajara or Atlanta or Mexico City. What matters is that there will be heartbreak, and we can only hope that it will be as historic and beautiful as our many heartbreaks gone by. We’ve waited a long time for our hearts to be broken like this again, so it better be worth it. 

If there is nothing else to hold onto, then at least we know that if we face another Saipan situation in which our star player is to abandon us, we have a president who could do a job in North America.

Indeed, it seems only right to settle on Catherine Connolly’s keepy-uppies as the defining image of our collective year. The video of Connolly doing keepy-uppies on the campaign trail in her wedges and slacks came within hours of former Dublin GAA football manager Jim Gavin leaving the campaign in a slice of political irony so delicious that it more or less carried Connolly all the way to a landslide win.

But in the end, it was probably not the irony of the moment that made Connolly’s keepy-uppies so special. It was perhaps, instead, that those few flicks of a football stood out against a drab year where many Irish people saw little to no progress being made in their circumstances. A drab course charted by drab men with drab ambitions. 

The video of Connolly schooling those kids at the Courtney Place flats in Ballybough looked like life, felt like life, a vision of a world that any one of us would be happy in which to participate. At the risk of overstating it, with a few skills, Connolly reminded the public that there is a way of leading the country that goes beyond scolding, delaying, denying and misleading. 

There is room for a bit of fun, for a bit of hope, for a bit of life. Let us hope to see more of it in 2026.