On the doorsteps, people are unhappy — especially a younger generation that feels locked out of the housing market. However, most commentators see this election as a done deal.

Not just the most boring election in the history of the country, but one that hardly matters because the outcome is settled already.

They’re wrong — or, at least, I hope they are wrong. Because if they’re right, we’re going to elect a Government with essentially the same failed approach to housing and healthcare — and other things — as the outgoing one. That’s why I call it sleepwalking.

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The people who lead this outgoing Government are honourable and decent people. They’ve worked hard, I’ve no doubt about any of that, but there have been massive failures and no admission of those failures and no plan to put any of it right.

Let me offer a couple of examples, and let’s start with housing.

In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s — including a time when I was minister for the environment —Ireland built houses.

Local authority output actually reached its peak in 1984 under a Labour minister

No matter how challenging the economic circumstances were, local authorities had extensive house building programmes.

They were driven by need and especially the need to reduce hosing lists. And we did it. Houses were both available and affordable then — never without difficulty, but never impossible.

Then the Celtic Tiger was born. Ireland began to get rich.

One of the first political decisions attributed to the Celtic Tiger was a decision to transfer the business of building homes for people to the private sector. That was a disastrous and foolhardy decision. We then went through a period when we build thousands of houses — mostly private — and the more we built, the more expensive they became.

We’ve never recovered from the decision to privatise housing need. We have ended up in a housing emergency for an entire generation. The last Government refused to see it that way, and there is no sign whatever that the next Government will declare an emergency. At the risk of repeating myself: Sleepwalking.

Let’s talk about health.

There’s a buzz word now in Government circles, the beginnings of an obsession with something called “productivity”. I’m all for that, but I can’t help wondering why there isn’t an obsession with issues like, for instance, scoliosis.

It’s a fixable condition that causes immense pain and suffering, getting in the way of development. Yet, all we do is talk about it.

When Ireland decided that good cancer diagnosis and treatment was a top priority, we treated it that way. But kids suffering? Why doesn’t that get the same priority and sense of top-level urgency?

It’s not the only issue by any means. The loss of dignity when elderly patients need an admission to hospital, the lack of adequate support for older people living alone and trying to maintain independence, the lack of a clear plan to finally address the needs of people with a disability — we desperately need to see a Government in place that has clear, stated, strategically focused priorities. 

I see a Government campaigning on a record of good book-keeping

Book-keeping is necessary, of course it is, but a strong economy that exists for its own sake is meaningless.

Except in short-term ways, the outgoing Government never demonstrated any sense that it wanted to put the economy to work for the people. I’m sorry to say it, but we’re being encouraged to sleepwalk into four or five more years of the same. I was leader of the Labour Party for a long time — the proudest job I ever did.

We didn’t always succeed, and we were punished when we failed, but we always had a clear set of published priorities and tried to focus on them.

Unlike some parties, we never had skeletons in the closet nor scandals to hide.

Above all, we believed in fighting for a country where inequality was the only enemy. Labour, no matter what difficulties it has faced, has never changed. It remains completely committed to a society where everyone is valued.

I can’t speak for Labour now but, as a member of the party all my life, there is a difference that needs to be made. Ireland doesn’t need another five years of a book-keeping Government.

It needs change and a clear set of clearly stated priorities on which the next Government can be measured

I strongly believe that if this Government wants to be re-elected, on whatever basis, it owes it to the people to set them out.

They need to stop the phoney bickering and point-scoring and tell us what they are really going to do.

As a country, we need to move away from the complacency and away from the lack of imagination that is all we’re being offered.

The last thing we need is five more years of the same old, same old.