WHERE'S THE 'PERVASIVE NEGATIVITY' IN IRISH CINEMA?

Twenty years ago the phrase that captured that era was 'mature recollection'. Now there's a new phrase to sum up our current era: 'pervasive negativity'. This was coined by An Taoiseach earlier this month and is a great one to apply to other areas. Such as our cinema. Where is it? Where's the 'pervasive negativity' in Irish film? Where are the films about people caught up in negative equity, emigration, overqualifications, redundancies, racial tensions, hopelessness, depression, and family breakups? I don't mean documentaries either! We have a speading gloom throughout the land but why isn't Irish cinema profiling this? What will critics think a decade from now when they look back on our current cinema and watch stuff like Zonad? Was the Irish film industry really that out of touch with reality? Were Irish filmmakers too afraid to tackle what was happening around them? Or were they all just directors-for-hire with absolutely nothing to say about the world around them?