It is not often that one would wish to find oneself on the same side as a political Rocky Horror Show incorporating such diverse characters as Michael 'the busted builder' Wallace and Richard Boyd Barrett.

But, having recently characterised their position on the household charge as nothing more than an upmarket version of tax evasion, could it actually be the case that their stance is more defensible than we thought?

One of the most curious features of ethics in politics, as practised in Ireland, is that it is very much an in-house affair. By that, we mean that as an issue, it is generally confined to payments to politicians and political parties, the non-payment by politicians of taxes, the tribunal troubles of our politicians and occasional condemnation of the black economy.

But surely one of the most serious ethical issues in politics is the right of the State to collect tax, the amount it should collect, and more importantly still, how it should spend these taxes.

This is certainly the case in countries such as America, where one of the central articles of its political philosophy is the issue of no taxation without representation.

In contrast, in Ireland, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the evolution of social partnership and the infamous Galway tent created a new political system where the coping private sector classes, who pay most of the tax, have no representation when it comes to how it is spent.

During the Tiger era, how our taxes were spent and the apparent right of bankers and builders to pay hardly any tax at all was greeted by the sort of resignation normally reserved for the great Irish rain-filled summer.

But as our Rainbow of Grumpy Old Men (and a couple of token women) sidles its hand ever more deeply into our pockets it is time we asked the question: what exactly do our taxes pay for?

Of course, anyone who is so vulgar as to raise such fiscal issues is normally shooed away with the observation that our tax is paid to nurses, schools, old people, hospitals and so forth.

But whilst that undoubtedly is partially true, it certainly is not the full story.

When it comes to the burning of our tax money, courtesy of the bonfire of the Celtic Tiger vanity projects, we are aware of the big-ticket issues such as Nama and of the legacy bequeathed to us by the bankers.

There are, however, thousands of other ways in which tax extracted at the point of a bureaucrat's ballpoint pen is not being put to good use.

Returning to the collapse of the banking system, we are, for example, paying bankers over €500,000. As they are now doing essentially the same work as post mistresses, perhaps they should be paid a similar salary.

And while our tax revenue is going to schools and hospitals, it is doing so in a manner unknown to man, or to any sane fiscal state.

In the coming months, for example, if government policies are successful, millions of euro will go on paying teachers six-figure lump sums, which in today's economic climate could purchase a family home in a midlands town.

One wonders what our poor Troika friends make of a scenario where teachers, not to forget our top-level civil servants and our patriotic ESB and Bord Gais workers, expect the sort of signing-off payments more normally associated with the lower level of premiership footballers, who are at least paid to sign on rather than sign off.

Of course, our taxes also go to subsidise the lifestyle choices of our millionaire college professors, many of whom would leave Cardinal Wolsey or a tribunal lawyer resembling a mendicant friar.

In passing, when it comes to our heroic tribunal lawyers, for whom no expenses' claim, be it for Belgian chocolates or the paper, was too small, before anyone gets too excited about the forthcoming Mahon tribunal report, the taxpayer can look forward to forking out millions to the private sector wing of our tribunal lawyers in the Moriarty and Mahon tribunals.

Oh, and before you ask, the people whom we should thank are our tribunal lawyers' colleagues in the Supreme Court whose decision on the Murphy case may have opened the door for the creation of an entirely new cohort of tribunal millionaire lawyers.

Our judiciary, in spite of Minister for Justice Alan Shatter's 'reforms', continue to trouser a far higher level of taxpayers' funds than their EU counterparts can even dream of; while in health we are expected to pay a unique troika of taxation, consisting of private health insurance, general taxation and PRSI to subsidise a system which has managed to be a rare synergy of the worst elements of public and private medicine.

And in a unique twist, those same millionaire hospital consultants, who are paid by our taxes, don't have to pay PRSI on their own private income.

In theory, the household charge which Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan is intent on raising should be going towards such non-glamorous services as collecting the bins, repairing that dodgy street lights and keeping the local library open.

Instead the bin collections are being privatised and the libraries shut so we can pay the wages of gloriously inept county councils which, courtesy of the hundreds of directors and assistant directors of services, resemble the local government equivalent of an Italian cruise ship commander.

Taxpayers are entitled to ask should their incomes be garnished by more than 50 per cent to subsidise the 32-hour working weeks of bureaucrats who, more often than not, use the desk as a pillow.

And those who live in collapsing houses have the right to ask why are they paying the six-figure salaries of the planners, who developed a system of light-touch regulation which meant it was far beneath the dignity of 'officials' to muddy their spotless boots by actually inspecting the houses being built.

We could, like Beckett's tramps, go on, but the point about the unreformed nature of the State is made.

What may be less clear is the consequences of the inability, or unwillingness, of our present governing classes to reform the State which Bertie, the bankers, builders and our social partners built.

One of the features of previous recessions was the black economy. This was partially informed by greed and, occasionally, genuine poverty, but, even more so by the collapse of any sense of respect for a State whose incompetence had driven the economy on to the rocks and destroyed the future prospects of its citizens.

An accelerating problem which this Government now faces is that the unreformed State in which we live means that it is losing the moral legitimacy necessary for the collection of tax. At the end of the day, Ming, Mick the Builder and the posh socialists are wrong, for civilised society is predicated upon the recognition that we are our brothers', our sisters', our parents' and our children's keepers.

But, while refusing to pay household charges is the politics of tax evasion rather than democratic socialism, it is time for us to be far more assertive about what we are prepared to pay. And if the Government fails to respond to this increasing anger, before the country embraces the nihilism of Ming, Mick, 'Posh' Boyd Barrett and Sinn Fein too, it is perhaps time Ireland had its own Boston tea party ... or created a new party centred on the unique concept (for Ireland) that, those of us who pay tax have some right to representation when it comes to its expenditure.

Originally published in