Who's actually running the place? That's a good question, and one which I've chosen to deal with here for lack of anywhere much better. The answer is probably that nobody quite knows. Nowhere in the country is there any one person (or even one group of people) who can be said to be "in charge", either symbolically or actually. Things are decided mostly by an interplay between various centres of power, each with its own particular areas of strength and weakness. You can basically narrow the groups down to the politicians, the bureaucrats, the spies, the generals, the businessmen, and a group of secret societies that think they're clever. (The unionists, the priests, the gangsters, and the aristocrats still think they're powerful, but aren't really).