After that wondrous Spring, this doesn’t feel like summer. Rather, it feels like October. Only the Eurovision and the Champions’ League remind you that we are supposed to be out in our smalls, enjoying the warmth, the luxury of sun on our backs and a sense that perhaps Eden was really a garden in its early summer splendour.

But we’re not. We’re still in a summer of discontent. You name it, there’s a problem. The row over college fees was the most obvious of recent vintages, but it was by no means the only one.

As it happens, Noel Dempsey was absolutely accurate in his deconstruction of the Labour Party position. There isn’t a shred of evidence that free college fees helped people from working class or economically disadvantaged backgrounds to enter or complete third level. Rather, it gave middle and upper class families more disposable cash with which to buy grinds for their children, thereby further advantaging them in the competition for points for higher education entry.