Blink and you missed it… or is there a shift in the nature of Irish politics?

Did you realise that it was the Green Party conference the weekend before the weekend before last? What about the location? Did you know it was held in Cork? Probably not, because press and other coverage was pretty minimal.

And that makes me wonder, is this going to be true of others, that the proliferation of parties and formations means that because there’s so many of them the coverage of all or most of them is going to be quite minimal.

One other odd aspect is that the focus seems now to be increasingly on parliament now. The water charges campaign has, effectively, lifted from the streets and communities. The government is doing everything it can to minimise bin charge issues – it doesn’t want to go there. Which means that suddenly everything flips to the Dáil or Seanad? Interesting.

But if voices are lost in the multitude, how does that work for the smaller parties and formations in the weeks and months and years to come?