I patiently waited for the farmer to find a place to pull in. It’s West Cork, so this usually only takes a few minutes. But I watched in growing consternation as the farmer drove past every chance to pull in, keeping me and the caravan of cars crawling along behind him for 40 minutes.

The entire time, not a single person honked. Not even once. It was late, we were tired; he was clearly inconsiderate and blatantly in the wrong — but nobody honked.

When I got home, I reminded myself that I love the no-fuss, Irish attitude to life. And I truly mean that; perspective is a wonderful quality of the Irish.

When I found myself stuck behind the same tractor in the same caravan with my closest friends the next night, however, I was less convinced.

“It’s a wonderful thing, it’s a wonderful thing — oh for the love of — pull over,” I shouted at the tractor as an elderly pedestrian overtook us. And still, not a single person honked.

The third time, I was apoplectic. I shouted. I pounded on the dashboard. I honked for entire minutes. But the tractor didn’t pull over. I was the lone honker — why should he pull over for one lunatic when 37 other cars waited patiently?

I love that the Irish, particularly in the countryside, are seemingly incapable of getting mad. They don’t make a fuss about anything. And I genuinely love that, I really do.

It makes hard times bearable; it’s an admirable trait in almost every other circumstance. But when it comes to the Government’s growing list of scandals and crises, the Irish inability to get mad has gone too far.

The Irish economy has been the fastest growing in the EU for the last four years — in those four years, the number of homeless children has risen from 749 to roughly 4,000. The number is only accelerating.

At the same time, according to the C&AG Report, the Department of Housing gave back €4m from its budget that it hadn’t used. The department, apparently, had not found a use for the money — in the middle of a housing crisis. Elsewhere, the Government paid €16m to rent a vacant office building for a year and a half.

The C&AG Report caused a mild uproar among the public for a day but then was shrugged off. Just like with the tractor, nobody wanted to make a fuss. How?

The Government could’ve given €5,000 to each homeless child with that money. Instead, they threw it away.

It’s not normal for a country to be simultaneously facing multiple crises caused by multiple scandals in nearly all of its Government departments. It’s even less normal for the country to be so understanding.

The children’s hospital is €450m over budget, with some saying it could go much higher. The Government recently announced a €500,000 inquiry to determine why the project had gone so over budget.

But there’s already been a report that determined the reasons for the scandal. The C&AG Report. It did not specifically name the children’s hospital, but it criticised the Government for, among other policies of recklessly wasteful spending, awarding contracts worth tens of millions of euro without any competitive tendering taking place.

Regardless of specific reasons behind the ballooning budget, the Government clearly has a spending problem. And yet, unbelievably, this report was shrugged off and forgotten before it could effect change. I haven’t heard it mentioned since October.

And so, since nobody’s honking, the tractor keeps driving.

There’s been outrage to some of the stories I’ve mentioned, I’m not denying that. But the outrage is followed swiftly by a shrug of the shoulders, and a general acceptance of this as the status quo.

And that’s the problem. The Government knows the public won’t make a fuss. Just like the farmer in the tractor, they know exactly how far they can keep going before people snap.

But who knows. Maybe the Irish can get mad? I just hope it happens before they snap.

A real movement needs to be urgent and sustained. It needs to rise out of collective anger, not explosive rage. Explosive rage only leads to self-defeating violence and reactionary rhetoric, like the yellow vest protests in France.

Collective anger can make the country whole again. I hope that the Irish will learn how to make a fuss.