This Government has got a dirty little secret. So cunning is it that nobody has noticed, even though it's waving it in front of our faces, boasting about it every chance it gets. Perhaps it's trying to hide it by making it so in-your-face you can't see it. Woods and trees, that old chestnut, writes Kilian Doyle
But I know what it is. And I will now share it with you, oh lovely readers. This Government is addicted to building roads.
Any problems? It builds a road. Bit bored and listless? It builds a road. Flush with cash? It builds a road. Broke, desperate for a way to hide it from us? It builds a road. Need a load of votes in a by-election? It builds a bigger road.
The Government shows all the classic symptoms of chronic cocaine dependence. Bravado, arrogance, throwing money around like confetti, spouting wonderful plans and projects that will save us all, ensnaring us in the intoxicating rush of the Utopian scenarios it is creating, before borrowing our life savings and blowing it all.
Its highs are followed by periods of feigned penance, wherein it confesses its sins, claiming it only ever have our interests at heart. But we know, as it does, that instant gratification is its only motivation.
We point out this isn't the first, or second, or even fifth time we've heard it say sorry. It bows its head in shame, holding one hand up in search of forgiveness as the other struggles to resist the urge to rifle through our wallets.
"We're really sorry about the M50," it says, cap in hand. "Really we are. We'll fix it. Honest."
We're sceptical. "How, exactly?"
"Ah, I'm glad you asked that," it'll say, before embarking on a 45-minute rant about 10-year funding envelopes, demographic surveys and spatial strategies. By the end of it, we're so bamboozled we've forgotten what question we asked. So we let it lie.
For, much as we moan and gripe and gnash our teeth at the pain it's causing us, we love it really. Sure, we kick it when it's down, threaten to throw it out again and again. But when it really comes to the crunch, don't we always take it back?
And that's our fatal mistake. We let the Government sucker us, let it believe it's gotten away with it again. And get away with it it does.
Rather than be forced to address the wreckage and mistakes of its past, it's free to blot it out and ploughing on regardless. No admitting defeat, surrendering in the face of insurmountable problems to seek alternative paths. No chance. The only Twelve Steps it cares about are the ones leading to Leinster House.
It's raid-the-coffers time again.
"We've got €1.4 billion set aside for roads this year," it announced to great fanfare. "And we're going to spend it all! Hurrah! We're starting 19 new roads and, you'll be glad to hear, we have a special project in mind. We're going to build a ring road around the whole of Greater Dublin."
We gasp. We want to believe. Really, we do.
It plans and plots. It's itching with excitement, desperate for that huge rush of power it'll get when it cruises down the newly opened road by ministerial Merc, synapses firing on all cylinders. Then comes the crash as it, ironically, gets horribly car sick.
And, predictably to everyone else, the road is a disaster. It ends up exactly the same as the last one - a semi-circular carpark where motorists' souls shrivel a little more each hour they spend on it.
So it builds another road around that one. And another, and another, and another, until the whole country is a series of parallel concrete rings around Dublin and there's no space left for anyone to live.
The Government is then left with two options - it stops, regroups and restarts its life - or it tries to tarmac the Atlantic. It gets out its shovels and its chequebooks.