CAN you spot the difference between a Marxist and a Stalinist? Just by looking at them?

You never cared ? Nor did I. Not until last week.

It is pretty easy really. Marxists sport trademark beards. Stalinists are grey apparatchiks.

By Friday evening, between them, they were calling the shots in Ireland.

On Wednesday afternoon, Michael Moynihan, chairman of a key Oireachtas Committee, asked the mandarins from the Department of Finance to answer a few questions about the financial crisis. More specifically, he sought the Merrion Street financial services gurus.

Funnily enough, the mighty mandarins have been flying below the radar for months.

Minister Brian Lenihan has been taking flak; the financial regulator is gone; bankers' blood is on the carpet; builders are bust; but the permanent government is cock-a -hoop, undisturbed.

The mandarins in the Department of Finance are the most powerful public servants in Ireland. They are the best paid for their troubles, the brainy elite of government employees.

Not only can they do their sums, they also know how to survive in the financial jungle.

Their titles even sound Stalinist. 'Second Secretary' Kevin Cardiff; 'Assistant Secretary' William Beausang; and 'Principal Officer' John Hogan appeared before the committee.

Like all good mandarins, they dressed identically. Grey suits, sober ties, well-groomed greying hair. They all wore the mandarins' mandatory, middle-of-the road spectacles. All of them shaved on Wednesday morning.

Like all good mandarins, they prattled a pre-rehearsed routine.William was there to read the script. Kevin was there to do the talking. John was the decoration.

William read a great script. Not a single item of information was included.

He tried to set the agenda by blaming "the negative impact of the international finance crisis on the banking system in Ireland".

Words which allow the mandarins to give themselves elbow room.

The rest of his short speech was full of stuff we already knew. Stalinists are masters of telling you things you know already. And instinctively they know not to tell you anything interesting.

Then it was over to 'Second Secretary' Kevin Cardiff, boss of the financial services unit.

The Department of Finance is the centre of all financial information in Ireland. It is the control room. It communicates with the banks, the Central Bank, the Regulator and the minister.

Information is power. Stalin knew that.

Kevin had information to beat the band, but there was no way he was parting with it.

Yes, they did speak to the minister. Yes they did speak to the banks . Yes they did speak to the Regulator.

Did they warn their minister of the time, Brian Cowen, at the height of the property furnace in 2006 and 2007, that the construction and banking balloon might go up in smoke?

Kevin gave us the Stalinist runaround of "structures, culture and skills". He asserted that it was a "convention" not to enter the fragile territory of individual cases.

Sir Humphrey's defence for saying nothing.

Decoded it was crystal clear that no one in the Department of Finance raised the red flag.

When I asked him about the 'green jersey' defence -- the excuse offered by Irish Life and Anglo for the amazing €7.5bn transfer of money between the two as Anglo's year ended -- the apparatchik in Kevin bristled.

Stalinists do not like colourful images. "I am not sure I like the phrase," declared Kevin sniffily. He then entered a long monologue about how they were eager to "allow normal liquidity arrangements between banks to continue to happen".

There was no danger of any information emerging.

Under pressure from Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd and Kieran O'Donnell, he said that "it would be lovely to say we did predict it [the financial crisis] but we were not "far away from the consensus view".

They apparently saw a downturn -- but not a catastrophe. "We must all strive to do better," he muttered modestly.

His responses set members of the committee wondering: here we had the most powerful people in Ireland's financial and banking orbit. They would talk for Ireland, say nothing and pay no penalty for the disaster. They were the guys who advised the minister; who on their own admission issued no warnings; who must have seen the clowns who posed as the financial regulators. According to insiders, the Department of Finance simply loved the bankers. They were not just in the loop; they were the loop.

And they were saying nothing. They imprison information, the true lever of power.

Part of Ireland is in the hands of unelected Stalinists.

The other part is being threatened by Marxists with beards. The Marxists and the Stalinists are at war.

As we were preparing to do battle with the Stalinist mandarins inside Leinster House, the Marxists outside the gates were threatening to wreck the economy.

Beards were popping up everywhere. Man of the moment, the white-bearded Eamon Devoy, was first out of the traps.

Eamon, leader of the electricians on strike, warned that there would be an all-out picket by unions in the construction industry "by the end of next week" if the electricians' dispute was not resolved.

Brown-bearded Jack O'Connor weighed in behind white -bearded Eamon on RTE's Morning Ireland on Monday. The Siptu chief shot straight from the hip. Solidarity among the bearded brethren was sacrosanct. Siptu would back Eamon's call for an all-out picket if the demand for an 11 per cent pay increase was not granted.

Grey-bearded David Begg was the next to join the comrades. David declared that the electricians were entitled to their 11 per cent pay increase. They would receive the support of Ictu for an all out strike.

On Thursday, the mouse-coloured beard of Martin Meere, of Siptu's Construction division, surfaced on RTE's Prime Time, backing up the crazy 11 per cent claim.

RTE then turned for comment to the employment specialist, Gerry Flynn -- of the well-tended beard -- to comment on the comrades.

On Friday morning, RTE's Morning Ireland kept to the bearded theme, interviewing Kieran Mulvey, the chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission, about the crisis brewing in the electricians' dispute.

It seems that even some of the independent creatures in the industrial relations swamp feel the need to allow growth all over their chins.

Waiting in the wings to offer support when the all-out strike occurs are almost the entire ranks of the bearded top brass in Impact.

Behold, the uniformly chinless Impact president John Power; deputy general secretary Shay Cody; national secretary Paddy Keating; communications officer Niall Shanahan; and all three of Impact's listed assistant general secretaries, Pat Bolger, Stephen Lyons and Robbie Ryan. All of them forego the pleasures of the razor in the mornings.

Ditto Ictu's economist Paul Sweeney and their industrial officer Fergus Whelan.

Karl Marx would be proud of them all.

Nearly as proud as Stalin would be of the mandarins.