IF Ray MacSharry and Alan Dukes laid its foundations, the proverbial roof of Ireland's remarkable economic performance in the Nineties was laid by a professional architect. By the early Nineties, the hard graft of cutbacks was over and after seven years of growth without much increase in employment, it was payback time. Government debt and taxes had fallen, but unemployment was still high and although growing, consumption and and investment growth were weak. Using a simple device that architects are trained to use -- and that no Finance Minister before or after has used -- Ruairi Quinn secured Ireland's prosperity. Simply put, he used a plan. And as the country suffers a barrage of ideas on how to recover -- some half-baked and some good -- what Ireland really needs now is a plan, a comprehensive, well-thought-out plan.

"Having been a professional architect in a private practice, I was aware how fluctuating interest rates and devaluations created havoc for an ordinary businesses, particularly clients in the commercial sector who would phone up the office to say: 'Look, interest rates have moved up two per cent; that building project is no longer viable'. Money could earn its keep comfortably by simply being on deposit without any risk and, therefore, venture capital of any kind simply wasn't available."

As Finance Minister under Ireland's EU Presidency of December 1996, Quinn was chief architect of the Stability Pact. For the Germans, nervous about letting Ireland, Italy and Belgium join the euro, it was a deal-breaker for agreeing to the euro. Quinn now dismisses with contempt the idea we should leave the euro, but agrees we need to plan better to survive inside it.

"It would be catastrophic. Not wrong, but catastrophic. We might as well link up with Iceland." Outside the euro, Ireland would be back to where it was in the Eighties and early Nineties, a land where investment was choked by high and volatile interest rates.

An architect's spirit level in one hand and the Maastricht treaty in the other, Quinn used his tenure as minister to find a stable equilibrium between these evil twin opposites. "In order to qualify for that holy grail of the currency, as I saw it we had to adhere to the Maastricht criteria and that was to have a budget deficit of less than three per cent, to bring our national debt down to less than 60 per cent of GDP and other requirements."

But once we were in the euro club, we began to forget that club rules still applied. "Instead of learning to behave like Germans, we continued to behave like Italians. There was no restructuring of the mortgage market. The open competition in the financial centre brought in other banks that wanted to get into the market and started producing 100 per cent mortgages. That could, and should, have been dealt with. I'll give you one concrete example of how irresponsible the government was: the 50 per cent reduction in Capital Gains Tax from 40 per cent to 20 per cent . . . analysis was done of where that windfall money went and 67 per cent of that money went into construction."

Here is where Quinn and his party diverge from economic reality and from the wishes of the electorate. Labour has always been a party of higher taxes, and while Quinn's leadership saw an impressive fall in unemployment from 17 to 10 per cent, it took Charlie McCreevy's gutsy reductions in income taxes to finally reach full employment.

Quinn at least sticks to his guns when I ask him if he agrees with Garret Fitzgerald that those on lower incomes should pay more tax.

"Yes, I do. I think the income-tax base has been utterly skewed and has been deliberately skewed politically". He blames Bertie Ahern for granting income tax reductions for political reasons but says the unions were only doing their job in asking for them.

Quinn also ignores how social partners lapped up taxes from the construction sector in the form of pay rises. He is also on dodgy ground in blaming the government for using tax cuts and spending promises to win elections. Against advice from myself and others, Fine Gael and Labour fought the 2007 general election on an equally generous and illusory platform of promises and economic forecasts. "I think there's an element of truth in that, yes," he concedes.

On Thursday, Siptu boss Jack O'Connor finally accepted that pay had increased by too much in the public sector. Ironically, it was a centre-right minister, McCreevy, who presided over benchmarking pay rises, while the left-of-centre Quinn was far more prudent and responsible.

But for all his faults, McCreevy ran budget surpluses in almost every year as Finance Minister. And whether you agree with McCreevy or Quinn on taxes, one thing is clear: both eras -- Quinn's from 1994 to 1997 and McCreevy's from 1997 to 2004 -- were infinitely superior to what followed. The Inchidoney years -- the period from 2004 to 2007 -- saw much of the good work of both men undone. In their own different ways, Quinn's centre-left and McCreevy's centre-right policies worked because they were cohesive and thought-out. The Inchidoney experiment -- pleasing everyone all of the time -- has exploded in a financial, fiscal and political mess.

But what can we learn from all this? Instead of the present isolated, disconnected panic-fest, Ireland needs a plan. A rigorous, joined-up plan. Since the pharaohs have been measuring the ebb and flow of the Nile, economic cycles have tended to average seven years, give or take. Between now and 2016 -- the 100th anniversary of the 1916 rising -- there are seven years to restore the peak of prosperity reached at the height of the boom, only this time it has to be different. Instead of high cost, Ireland must be low or at least medium cost. Instead of high public spending, Ireland must be a medium spender. And instead of the Anglo-Saxon, helter-skelter, boom-bust property market, we must rebuild our property market on strong, stable and sensible foundations with fixed interest rates, improved laws for land use and rented accommodation, proper urban and spatial co-ordination.

And unless pay cuts and tax increases are to result in an ungovernable country, the cost of living must be reduced systematically. This has to be done anyway to restore Ireland's battered competitiveness. In 1997, economic planning was about joining the euro. Between now and 2016, its about showing we're mature enough to stay in it.

Described as 'excellent' by Constantin Gurgdiev and 'a must read' by Charlie McCreevy, 'Back from the Brink' by Marc Coleman is on sale in all good bookshops now

Sunday Independent