The new year is a natural moment to pause and reflect. It’s a chance to think about what went well over the past year, what didn’t, and what we want the year ahead to look like. In short, it’s an opportunity to reset.

A helpful question to ask at this time of year is: What would need to have happened by the end of next year for me to look back and feel it had been a success?

Now, try asking that same question from the point of view of the Irish Government.

To date, this administration has been underwhelming. 

Elected unloved in 2024, it had the slowest of starts in 2025. Its legislative accomplishments have been anaemic – barely a dozen pieces of legislation were signed by the president last year. 

When the Programme for Government was published at the start of last year, I argued that it was the first government in three decades without an overt ideology. There was no Green Party championing climate action, or a Labour Party pushing social justice. There was not even the small state, pro-market ethos of the Progressive Democrats. 

A year on, the lack of this ideological anchor is clear to see. It is why it seems to be lurching to the right on immigration without a wider societal conversation. It is why no one really believes in its housing plan. 

It is not that the Government has been beset by crisis after crisis. Instead, it simply seems lost, adrift. It seems tired.

The botched presidential campaign has undermined the authority of the Taoiseach. The Tánaiste seems bruised and mojo-less. Most of the cabinet members are anonymous.  

We all know Ireland does short-term quite well. It does crisis well. We saw it in the response to the pandemic, and we saw it in how it manoeuvred across Europe after the Brexit ballot. Our system is excellent at dealing with short-term problems.

The difficulty, however, starts with the medium and the long term. We do these things badly because we barely do them at all. 

Our system of checks and balances, the apparatus of our government, does not really know how to manage a supply-constrained economy experiencing waves of technological shocks. 

Put bluntly, it has historically managed an economy where demand was the key constraint, with too many people chasing too few resources. Now we have resource abundance; the challenge is the ability of the economy to supply the necessary houses, roads, factories, and people, causing policymakers’ pulses to rise. 

Ireland’s senior policymakers remember the bad days of 2008 to 2014 too well. They remember having to administer a nation that didn’t have an arse in its trousers, and their every decision today is conditioned by the brute fact of that history, even as multinational profits continue to swell the nation’s coffers to near-bursting levels.

This is a pivotal year for the Government. It is now fully bedded in and, by this point, should be operating at full speed. After a year marked by fairly lacklustre action, the next 12 months will shape how this Government is judged — and whether it earns another term.

The next 12 months are crucial for this Government, because, amid growing geopolitical uncertainty and changing trading patterns, they are crucial for the country and the economy. 

So what would success look like? 

Progress on these four things: Disability, childcare, housing, and infrastructure. They were the themes of the 2024 election, and they should be the themes of 2026.

Where are the transformational disability strategy, action plan, and actions? Where are the childcare strategy, action plan, and actions? We have a housing plan with few targets and an infrastructure plan with many of them. 

2026 needs to see progress across all four of these areas. Distractions will come as they always do. Some will be internal, most will be external. 

Crises pop up, things go wrong, key people leave. But the show must go on. 

We must break the back of the planning and regulatory barriers stymying housing and infrastructure delivery. Put names and targets beside actions, accept that risks exist and mean things will go wrong and things will go right. 

Back the risk-takers when the brown stuff hits the rotating object, learn from what went wrong, and move on. Reduce the Punch-and-Judy elements of the Dáil committees and let our civil servants just do their jobs. Find ways to fire those civil servants who don’t do their jobs, but back the ones bold enough to take quantified risks to make new things happen. 

Get on with turning the eye-watering amounts of money allocated in the National Development Plan, Budget 2026, and the tens of billions yet to be allocated in the Medium Term Fiscal Framework into housing, schools, hospitals, factories, offices, roads, motorways, bridges, flyovers, rail tracks, signalling systems, railway stations, trains, trams, metro carriages, tunnels, ports, quays, docks, cranes, reservoirs, water treatment plants, pumping stations, water mains, sewers, wastewater treatment works, electricity power plants, wind farms, solar parks, transmission pylons, substations, underground cables, gas pipelines and gas storage facilities, fibre optic cables, flood defences, sea walls, levees, drainage channels, pumps, control gates, street lighting systems, pavements, cycle lanes, waste recycling plants, and much, much much more. 

Get on with creating the services our disabled citizens have called for for decades. Deliver what was promised to the people, an integrated network of services they deserve. 

Get on with a national childcare model that lowers the cost of having kids substantially. 

Get on with removing the social stain that is child homelessness. 

The huge sums of money at its disposal mean the Government has a wonderful opportunity to make a difference, to make 2026 the year the Irish public realises the scale and the scope of the Irish State and, by delivering, infuse belief in our citizens that the system they fund with their toil is capable of solving some of the deepest needs of their lives. 

If 2026 is to mean anything, it must be the year this Government proves it can move from drift to delivery.

Let that be the review of 2026: The year we got it done.

Elsewhere last week…

Michael caught up with Wexford native Conor Lambert. His working life began at the age of eight, when he would sort bottles at his grandparents’ pub in Wellington Bridge. He now leads BDO’s tech, media, and telecoms offering in the UK. He spoke about working with ad magnate Martin Sorrell, the rise of private equity, and the future of family-run firms.

Ireland takes on the EU presidency in the second half of 2026, but Cyprus holds the ball now and will be expected to make meaningful progress on big-ticket items before Dublin takes over. Jonathan ran the rule over what we can expect from the next six months and what that means for Ireland. 

Three years after Covid grounded global aviation, airlines are flying higher than ever. For Ireland, that recovery brings both opportunity and urgent policy choices, according to Joe Gill in his column published on Friday. 

On January 1, Dion had a wonderful essay about community and why we should never take it for granted. The way Dion sees it, how the country deals with the change in our society will be as critical as how it manages its infrastructural challenges. Doing nothing, he says, is not an option, even if it sometimes seems like the default one.