The excitement of the European Parliament and the local councils election over, we are back to the usual and the normal. Summer's lethargy is already upon us, the festas are beginning and people's minds turn to the summer hols and travel.

And it also seems that the rush and haste of the past weeks to finish particular jobs in time for the elections is now over and one can already sense a slackening-off of pressure, at least in the public sphere.

The private sphere, on the contrary, is still all systems go, especially the construction sector where the onset of summer leads to more hours of daylight and hence more hours of work.

So everything is getting back to normal, whatever that normal may be. Truly, what's normal? Roads that are getting worked over with dust, inconveniences and delays. Construction work with no let-up, with no control, blocking roads, pulling down buildings, damaging neighhbouring ones.

On the people side: more people in employment, more people coming in from abroad. The numbers speak for themselves. All this means, more pressure on the infrastructure, which has not been upgraded enough and which is not keeping with the increased usage.

One can see this clearly from the state of the roads which simply cannot cope with the increased traffic nor with the huge efforts being made to widen them, to make them better.

But a better example would probably be the drainage system which just cannot cope with the increased usage by a population augmented by tourists.

The same can be said of the health services and the educational system. As a country, we just do not have the required resources to cope with all this huge intake of people.

Something must give. All this was of course mentioned in the recent election campaign with different nuances from different parties. But, the election over, we are back where we were with no solution in sight.

It does not matter, for that matter, which party won and which lost. Many have no doubt that even if the election turned out the opposite from what it did, we would still have been left with the same situation as we described. It's the entire template that needs to be changed, not just the party at the top.

There are no easy solutions to a quite complex situation. But at the very least, there must be some sort of breather instead of this helter-skelter approach that is best seen on the roads and on construction sites. The summer break comes not a moment too soon. This country needs a break.

For all the talk in the past weeks, there are certain sectors in our population that need more than just a break or a breather: there are people who cannot get both ends to meet, who cannot cope with a meagre minimum wage or pension and with the cost of so many things going up. There are people with just part-time jobs and full-time responsibilities.

And we are talking here of migrants (of all colours) and of Maltese citizens at the bottom of the scale, people who have missed out on educational improvements and who are being left by the wayside in a society with a more and more luxury lifestyle.

It's the entire template that must be changed.