The Irish Answer

Levon Biss for TIME

Kenny in his office, flanked by the E.U. and Irish flags and photographs of people he admires.

Enda Kenny is due to attend the Sept. 20 opening of the new premises of Arvato Finance, a German-owned billing and payment-services company, in Dublin's docklands, but has delayed his convoy to take a call. Conversations with Ireland's Prime Minister are often pleasantly discursive; if words were money, Kenny could have easily cleared the national debt since coming to power in February 2011. And so, at the appointed hour, he finds himself gridlocked in traffic, facing the skeleton of a building that was to have housed the headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank, the country's third largest lender until red...

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