Incompetent the great officials never were.

A poet tells us that there are only two people in the world who ever understand a man--the woman who loves him, and the enemy who hates him best.

In one of these ways, if not in the other, Dublin Castle understands Ireland.
Did it not know what the people of Ireland want, it could not so infallibly have maintained its tradition of giving them the opposite.
Other critics again find the deadly disease of the Boards to reside in the fact that they are a bureaucracy.

This diagnosis comes closer to the truth, but it is not yet the truth.

Bureaucracies of trained experts are becoming more and not less necessary.