The Priory Hall apartment complex, Dublin.

It’s not that Enda Kenny is an unkind man, it’s not that he doesn’t care. He sees the world differently – and unfortunate occurrences such as Priory Hall are not his business. The free market regulates these things, and in the market there are winners and losers.

When the banks collapsed in 2008, this column said that the next few years would see a fight over who picked up the tab. The establishment, here and in the EU bureaucracies, would do its best to bring about economic recovery. But there were conditions. It must be recovery without change. The social and economic hierarchies must be maintained, with all their statuses and privileges.

This corrupt, inefficient, dangerous set-up went to extraordinary lengths to indulge the greed of the few – and, as a result, destroyed itself. The aftermath needed an adversarial approach to the corruption, the recklessness, the ruthlessness. That wasn’t on anyone’s agenda. The same structure, the same people, prevailed. Capable of nothing else, the establishment has for six years now been trying to restore the system as it was. Any notions of justice, fairness or decency are dismissed as an unaffordable luxury.