We Irish view the world in an increasingly strange and unhealthy way. We catastrophise about Covid in a way other European countries do not. We focus on how bad the effects of the virus could get, on how many more restrictions might be imposed by Government and how helpless we are in the face of the virus.
e focus much less on what we can do to lessen its effects: by increasing our health capacity, by talking about adopting the many new treatments that are being successfully used around the world and by exploring the vaccines that are being developed and what issues will arise around roll-out.
The national conversation is one of breathless exaggeration and panic.
Our new default setting was also to be seen during the General Election at the beginning of the year. During the campaign we were beset by 'crises', the catastrophists claimed. The fastest growing economy in the developed world over half a decade didn't have mere problems, as every imperfection and challenge was a crisis.
And because we did not live in a utopian idyll, somebody had to be to blame. In the juvenile condition into which we have reverted, the closest thing we have societally to a parent figure is the Government.
The Government was to blame - for everything. Government politicians were accused of incompetence, which was no doubt correct in some cases. Some ministers were accused of not solving problems because they didn't care and lacked empathy for those, for instance, who were struggling to find homes or to pay high rents.
This is a less plausible charge, not because politicians want only to serve others, but because if they are seen to be failing to deliver for voters then they will be out of a job.
One panellist in a TV discussion even called the then government 'traitors'. For reasons that were not elaborated on, the pundit claimed that the deliberate and premeditated betrayal of voters by politicians explained the slow progress on dealing with housing shortages.
Catastrophising was much in evidence during the Brexit saga. The slightest change to how the border on this island functions could trigger a rerun of the Troubles. The risk of protests at new border posts was always real.
The risk that it would have a knock-on effect, triggering the sort of full civil conflict that this island experienced between the late 1960s and the 1990s, was next to negligible. Despite that, it became the bedrock of Government policy on Brexit.
In a serious outbreak of groupthink, the Government's policy on removing Northern Ireland from the UK's internal market was not discussed, debated or challenged.
If some token balance to the conversation was needed, the comedic figure of the DUP's Sammy Wilson was wheeled out. Moderate and coherent voices such as those in the UUP were ignored. They were ignored despite their belief that a border in the Irish Sea was as threatening to them as a border on this island was to nationalists.
A combination of groupthink and catastrophising means that our collective capacity to analyse risk calmly has weakened.
One of the most serious risks we face, and one that gets little attention, is that the Government could run out of money. That would return us to the sort of situation we were in exactly a decade ago: bailout territory.
I raised this prospect on a radio show last Monday morning. It ruffled feathers in officialdom.
The official view is that the Irish State can borrow cheaply, that the underlying economy is strong, and that the most commonly used measure of economic activity -GDP - is doing better than most countries in the pandemic.
These points are all correct. In many ways, Ireland has gone into this recession/depression in much better shape than it went into the last one. In February the economy was lean and competitive, and the private sector had paid down much of its bubble-era debt.
When it comes to public indebtedness, however, the State is in much worse shape than 2008.
Public debt is now around five times higher than before the property crash. At more than €200bn, it is one of the highest in the world when measured on a per-capita basis. In more than half a decade of good economic times, it was not lowered.
This was a mistake because there was always a risk that the good times could end and that debt levels would ratchet up to unstable levels. Even a normal-sized recession would have exposed the Government. Now we have a giant-sized recession.
All this raises the question: how much debt can a country bear? That is not an easy question to answer. There is no magic threshold at which lenders take fright.
The biggest difference between the current situation and the last time the country got into serious trouble is how the European Central Bank (ECB) has acted since it got its act together.
On Friday, March 13, when the ECB was still at sixes and sevens over its pandemic response, the assets on its balance sheet were worth €4.7trillion. Over the next few days, its senior people stopped saying things that panicked financial markets and started saying things to calm them.
By the middle of the following week, Frankfurt had unveiled its huge pandemic asset purchase programme. The money-printing plan was similar to those that other major, developed-world central banks had already put in place.
The panic among the money men then subsided. They knew that all the big central banks had their backs. A buyer of last resort, and increasingly of first resort, was standing by to hoover up any dodgy IOUs they had in their portfolios. They could sleep soundly.
So could those who govern euro-area countries. The vast sums governments are borrowing, including the Irish Government, are effectively being funded by ECB money-printing. Between March and the beginning of October, the balance sheet of the ECB had ballooned by more than 40pc to stand at a mind-boggling €6.7trillion. This figure is scheduled to increase until the middle of next year.
This is the most vital piece of background information when considering the framing of this week's Budget. Because of ECB money-printing, the Government can continue to borrow heavily going into 2021. The big question is: what happens in the second half of 2021?
If the ECB were to go cold turkey, everyone would be goosed. It is very unlikely to do that but countries with records of sound public finances fear the signal that unlimited money-printing sends to more profligate ones.
How and when to wean governments off printed money - and back on to the funding of private investors who impose market discipline - will be a source of discord among the 19 members of the currency union. It could end up being the mother of all euro fights.
If Irish Government bonds start to look like a bad bet - if and when that happens - the State's fate will be out of its hands. That's the risk a country runs when it doesn't use the good times to pay down debt it has run up in bad times.
