This article discusses the prospects of Ireland emerging from crisis renewed and reformed as a second republic. Evidence from opinion polls and surveys confirms Irish citizens value key republican principles of equality, rights and fair distribution; however, trust in politics, government and non-government organisations is low and the 2016 general election confirmed the absence of leadership to create political momentum around such values. The answer to the question of what is needed to generate a new politics or a high energy democracy lies in understanding how the crisis has impacted on values and attitudes towards key leadership institutions and how it has changed Irish political and civil society. Examining the relationship and linkages between the two allows some assessment of Irish political and civil society’s capacity for a values-led discourse that could promote a transformative-type change. We identify the absence of effective framing, a necessary prerequisite for effective linkage and mobilisation. What is required for a new politics is an Irish triple movement which incorporates gender and social reproduction, as well as environmental and traditional distributional concerns about income equality and public services. Such framing offers potential to mobilise across a wide range of actors and create a livelier battleground in which the interests of a much wider section of the population can find expression, create new alliances, reshape power relations and, over time, create a second republic.