A return to business as usual would be a national tragedy

However, promises of a series of tax cuts leave us skating on thin ice, potentially highly exposed to weak eurozone growth, increases in interest rates or any declines in the US or UK economy. There are good reasons to get some money back into the economy and to give relief to under-pressure households. However, the Taoiseach and Minister for Finance's promises to undertake a programme of ongoing tax cuts is risky in the extreme.

Moreover, the focus on the distribution of cash obscures more fundamental issues. Strong economies have a sophisticated and diverse private sector supported by extensive and excellent public services, themselves funded through stable economic performance that supports good wages. Ireland is seriously lacking in all these respects.

The core of our crisis lay, as everyone knows, in an economy driven by finance and property - an economy that failed to develop a serious Irish-owned base of high quality producers, whether in manufacturing, technology, design or other key areas of the economy. The recovery in employment over the past two years has been heavily concentrated in areas related to tourism (air travel, eating out, accommodation) and construction (even the expansion in professional services has been in areas linked to property, such as architecture and engineering). There are bright spots such as food and a recent partial upturn in retail. However, there is little sign that we are remaking our domestic economy as ICT, manufacturing and non-property based services tread water and as wages improve very slowly, if at all.

If our public finances are now somewhat under control, this has come at a huge cost to our public services. Contrary to the rhetoric but in keeping with common sense, we have been 'doing less with less'. Combine this with our historical lack of social investment and our public services are under severe pressure. Some of the effects are short-term, as seen most clearly in the homelessness crisis. Others will become more visible over time. The outsourcing of job market services for the long-term unemployed to private companies reduces our ability to get crucial supports and combinations of services to those jobless households who need them most, leaving the scars of the crisis visible well into the future. The expansion and improvement of shared public services is crucial to our future but has disappeared off the political agenda.

Politics, as ever, cuts across these issues. The parliamentary party system is disastrously dysfunctional. Over-centralisation of power within the system marginalises not only citizens but even leaves most TDs with few channels through which they can contribute to national debates. The government often ignores the opinions of even its own consultative bodies. For example, when the Taoiseach simply dismisses the guidance of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (as is his right) rather than providing clear reasons for that rejection, he weakens the public debate and the vibrancy of democracy. The Irish Water debacle was not simply an example of poor government management but of how our form of politics generates an outcome which is almost the worst of all possible worlds, an over-expensive, under-funded utility, no incentive for limiting water usage, further pressure on exchequer funding and no guarantees against privatisation.

Politics is crucial. A people cannot simply decide to trust each other and to commit to a future together. Politics needs to build this as a realistic possibility. Indeed, we can find many places across the public service, policy systems, business, communities and society where people and groups work towards this end. Citizens are hungry for something different but unsure what that might be. Will the 'recovery' be a return to business as usual or can Irish politics and society move to a more genuine debate about our common future and how it could be achieved?

Maybe someone might even be willing to lose an election to move us to that new ground.

Sean O Riain is author of 'The Rise and Fall of Ireland's Celtic Tiger' and is professor of sociology at Maynooth University.