Sad state of our flitting leaders

I feel so ashamed. There I've been, all these years, blaming them for their behaviour, showing no sympathy, being cruelly judgmental.

I thought it was their fault that they couldn't concentrate, that they kept going off at bizarre tangents to the real problems, that they indulged their impulses without thinking of the consequences. I thought they behaved like this just because they wanted to be that way.

And then I was looking through a medical dictionary and I was mortified to find that they are simply ill. Forget FF/PD, think ADHD. Think for a moment about the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and you realise that our poor Government has been bravely struggling along with this condition for almost nine years now, covering it up, refusing to seek help. It is time for compassion, understanding and a large dose of Ritalin.

Once you know the symptoms, the diagnosis is obvious. ADHD is characterised by what the medical manuals call the "classic triad of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity". People who suffer from the disorder have problems with what's called "working memory". This refers to "those ideas that we can keep active in our minds at a given moment. For example, in order to learn from mistakes, you have to be able to juggle not just the present situation, but also keep in mind past times when certain strategies did or did not work. Working memory hopefully also includes keeping future goals in mind. People with ADHD never get to develop good function of their working memory".

Sufferers also have difficulty focusing on the future: "Foresight [predicting and planning for the future] will be deficient when inadequate working memory teams up with a poor ability to inhibit the present distractions. People with ADHD cannot keep the future in mind. They are prisoners of the present; the future catches them off guard. In fact, surprisingly poor foresight is perhaps the greatest difficulty in their lives."

Doesn't all of this sound eerily familiar? By the time of the next general election, the Government will have been in office for 10 years. It has had, for almost all of that period, abundant resources. It has also had the benefit of reasonably low expectations. Most Irish people are so fatalistic about politics that they would be delighted if a government managed to achieve four or five basic things in a decade, things like sorting out the A&E crisis or planning an adequate public transport system or ensuring that every child in a rich country would have at least a chance of a decent life.

What we have instead is a Government that consistently fails to keep an idea in its head for more than a few moments. It can't draw lessons from the past and it can't focus on the medium-term future. So it allows itself to be distracted by momentary enthusiasms. Again and again, time, energy, money and political capital are invested in pet schemes and passing fancies. An idea that may or may not be good in itself catches a ministerial eye and takes the mind off the job in hand. It floats in like a pretty butterfly and the minister follows it off through the fields with a net, lunging at every flower on which it alights before it takes off again, flitting lightly away from the increasingly mad pursuit.

There is a huge infrastructural deficit to be dealt with. It needs rigorous planning and serious long-term thinking. But the Taoiseach gets bored and spends much of his first term obsessed with the building of a giant football stadium just off the most clogged-up motorway in the country. The butterfly flits, he loses interest and it is as if the whole thing never happened. We have a big problem with the unplanned and imbalanced development of the State. We get a spatial strategy, but it is hard and detailed and will require a rigorous focus. Charlie McCreevy spots the butterfly of decentralisation on his windowsill, dives after it and the Government spends its years and our millions pursuing another momentary fancy. We have a big problem with the state of our democracy, corroded from the inside by cynicism and corruption. But, ooh, look at those lovely electronic voting machines, glinting there on the horizon - I want some of those, and I want them now.

The latest Minister to manifest the classic symptoms of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity is Michael McDowell. The Morris report on the scandals in Donegal has created the most serious crisis of confidence in the history of the Garda Síochána. Gun crime is out of control. Hundreds of people are dying unnecessarily on the roads every year, partly because the enforcement of the traffic laws is woefully inadequate. So what's the most urgent task for the Minister for Justice? What's so vital that it has to be done right now, even if it throws policing into hysterics? A Garda reserve.

The symptoms couldn't be clearer and I apologise profusely for having missed them. Once you realise that they suffer from a collective form of ADHD, sympathy replaces blame. They can't help being distracted from the job in hand and we can't help loving them for the way they've striven gamely on, pretending to be in control.