IN A FEW weeks our politicians will return from their constituencies all over the country after their long summer holidays to Dáil Eireann. But I would prefer if they were going to the country rather than returning from it. We need a general election. Fianna Fáil talks a lot of guff about putting the country first. It would have us believe it is doing the country a great service by hanging on in Government until 2012.

But if it truly wants to put the country first – by that we mean put the interests of the people ahead of the party's own interest – then it should call a general election. It has shamelessly procrastinated and prevaricated over the three long-overdue by-elections. The Government is leaderless, directionless and now pointless.

We have known for some time that Brian Cowen doesn't have the aptitude or the application to handle our nation's worst economic crisis. For more than two years he has refused to even do a much-needed state of the nation address. People are frightened. They would take some comfort from at least having the Taoiseach acknowledge their anxiety. We don't expect miracles but we do expect our leader to be there for us.

This Government is out of touch with the people. When Minister John Gormley's Department of the Environment announced it would be criminalising people who used their commercial vehicles to drive their children to school, many of us asked, on what planet are these politicians living?

But the last straw for me was Dermot Ahern announcing that he was considering charging us a fee for using ATMs to withdraw our money from banks. His reason for this was because his Department of Justice was failing to stop bank robberies involving what is termed tiger kidnappings. His solution was we should all be penalised and discouraged from looking for cash from a bank in the first place.

This is a rotten government. I don't say that lightly and I mean it literally. Dermot Ahern is one of the most capable ministers in this Government. He is a much-admired constituency worker. Minister Ahern does not drop balls. He is reliable, he is astute and, most importantly, he is not arrogant. That's why within 24 hours of announcing this stupid proposal he was U-turning at speed. He knew he had dropped the ball.

But this is a rotten government. And the rot is spreading. Even a capable politician like Dermot Ahern has been contaminated. The sooner we have a general election the better.

HAVE WE BEEN TOLD THE FULL TRUTH ABOUT MICHAELA'S DEATH?

It is more than a week since the body of 12-year-old Michaela Davis was discovered. She was brutally murdered – strangled. The media, it appears, on this occasion are sensitive to the grief that her parents must be suffering and will for a long time to come. Our thoughts are with them.

But questions need to be asked about the circumstances leading up to her rendezvous with death. She was just 12. She was out until midnight. She came home. It is reported she told her parents she was just going out for a few minutes and her parents apparently consented to her going out of their home at a quarter past midnight.

I can't imagine any family circumstances that would countenance a 12-year-old going out unaccompanied after midnight.

The story, as it has been reported by every national newspaper, does not sound credible. Are we saying, in 2010, it is normal parenting practice for 12-year-olds to go out of their homes unaccompanied after midnight? If this is so, the country is not just in an economic mess – we are socially in decay.

PROTEST ABOUT TONY BLAIR

It always amazes me what people are willing to protest about. Three-hundred people turned up in Dublin last Saturday to protest at Tony Blair's book signings for his just-published memoirs of his time as British Prime Minister.

They were agitating about his invasion of Iraq, and the war against Saddam Hussein, ending his regime but collaterally killing inestimable civilians and leaving the country in ruins financially and politically. But nothing the protestors will do can change one thing that has happened in Iraq. Yet the protestors diligently turned out and protested with vigour.

I just wish people would get as concerned about things we need to change here in Ireland, such as, our dysfunctional health service, the rise and rise of gangland murders, or a politician claiming expenses for a mobile phone from a company that no longer existed. Maybe it is true, we get the politicians, the public services and standards, or lack of them, we deserve.

- Gavin Duffy