Does it really matter to the economy which parties are in government? It is not just the "plague on all their houses" brigade who don't think so, but anyone looking at the currently-stated positions of the political parties would conclude the same.

Recurrent political tremors and the cut and thrust of politicking over the Sheedy case, disguise the fact that economic policy has become something of a sea of tranquillity of late. Strip away the usual cross-party accusations of incompetence, malpractice, sloth, laziness, wilful default, fraud and negligence and you'll see the harmony and general goodwill in economic areas.

Last week's annual Labour Party conference speech by Ruairi Quinn confirms this trend, coming straight after the Progressive Democrats' conference and, earlier this year, Fine Gael's ardfheis. Looking at the three speeches, the differences are tactical rather than strategic, in implementation rather than ideology.

Since elections are again in the air, it is worth looking back to where we have come from in two short years. Then the election campaign got off to a roaring start - for those excited by these things - by different approaches to income tax policy. Cut the rates? Expand the bands? That was the burning issue. Apart from predictable and unanalytic howls of anguish on the cutting of the capital gains tax rate in the first budget, the debate on tax rates and bands has been killed off by the innovation on tax credits in the second.

In his speech last weekend, Mr Quinn didn't mention tax policy at all. John Bruton simply asked a rhetorical question about capital gains taxes. Mary Harney, as expected, reviewed the fall in the rates, from their confiscatory heights in the mid-1980s to their grin-and-bear-it levels now. No one now proposes to raise the higher rate again. Labour accepted the cut from 48 per cent to 46 per cent (but only as a trade off against higher PRSI payments). In fact, no successor government has, since perhaps the 1970s, ever reversed a higher tax rate cut, no matter how much it was opposed at the time.

Also notable by its absence in the general election campaign was any debate on privatisation of State companies. "Privatisation" was a taboo word just two years ago. Now it is assumed by the Labour Party as well as by the Government that a programme of the sale of State assets is in place and will continue.

Public private partnerships and employee share ownership of privatised companies, two issues now to the fore, were not aired at all, back in 1997. Now they are part of the agreed platform, sorry, the common ground, between the Progressive Democrats and Labour.

Investment in infrastructure is a stated priority for all parties. Bertie Ahern's recent IMI speech placed heavy emphasis on such investment. Ruairi Quinn has been calling for a decade of investment since last summer. It formed a large part of Mary Harney's speech to her party. John Bruton emphasised traffic, housing, child care and health as key areas for improvement. The only issue is how far and how fast we can go towards building our physical and social infrastructure.

As broad statements of purpose and fundamental principle, there doesn't seem to be much between a party of "the public interest, not the vested interest" (the PDs) and "the party of the public good". Indeed, Mr Quinn said that "socialism is the philosophy of the public interest", which sort of makes Mary Harney and John Bruton socialists. Mr Bruton's "new patriotism" is also much of the same thing.

There are, of course, still differences between the parties in style and context, in how the common policy ground has been reached.

The last government had a problem with cutting the higher rate of tax. Even if the lower rate is now accepted, the inclination that a higher rate of near 50 per cent is "fair" is surely not gone. Similarly, "privatisation" was taboo only because the Labour Party, in particular, but also Fianna Fail in its way, was afraid of a veto from the unions. Was there not a cost to the economy in having to wait so long for this taboo to be broken, even by agreement?

The question is really whether a particular government will have any such taboos; whether there are changes in the economic area it would just not countenance out of ideology or for fear of offending its supporters. Changes like those which have, since 1997, found acceptance, and further changes which will be required to develop our economy. It must surely be clear to Mr Quinn that a decade of investment of up to £70 billion (€88.88 billion) will simply not happen without a lot of change, including some political pain.

Oliver O'Connor is an investment funds specialist