I’m not sure people appreciate the enormity of what has happened in Ireland. A party with a paramilitary wing has just won an election.

Where is the international outrage? Twenty years ago, the EU imposed a form of diplomatic quarantine on Austria because of the inclusion of the Freedom Party in a coalition. More recently, it has threatened Poland and Hungary on grounds that it regards their ruling parties as authoritarian. Yet not even the severest critics of those parties accuses them of being linked to organised crime.