Each year, the Revenue Commissioners collect about €50 billion in a variety of taxes and duties, and this money goes to fund the wheels of government and public services, writes Consumer Affairs Correspondent, Paul Cullen.
We constantly scrutinise the cost of consumer goods, even small purchases, yet far less attention is paid to the value of money provided by public services. This is, after all, still our money, even if we have paid it over to the tax collectors. And, unlike most of our purchases, we have no choice about contributing when it comes to taxation.
When public spending does come under the microscope, the issue invariably ends up as a political football. Attention focuses on the politicians who make decisions rather than the public servants who implement them. Ironically, the politicians usually move on, while the public servants tend to stay put.
One measure of the government we get is the amount it charges for its services, ie the taxation rates. The story here in relation to direct taxes is positive; they have dropped consistently over the past 15 years and are now among the lowest in the world.
Taxes on property and corporations are also low. In contrast, rates of indirect taxes, such as VAT and excise duty, whose burden fall disproportionately on the less well off, are relatively high. Overall, though, Ireland's tax burden is below average by international standards.
But if the price is right, the quality of the delivered goods doesn't always impress. As Dermot Jewell of the Consumers' Association points out, overall, government and the public service are doing a better job in relating to citizens, yet service can still be slow and the quality is often uneven.
A 2002 report by PA Consulting found that the Civil Service was better managed and more effective than it had been a decade earlier, and it attributed this change to the ongoing modernisation programme. Now the Government has called in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to have another look at our public services to see how they compare internationally.
One way in which the Government is opening up to citizens is through new technologies, principally the internet. The reality of "eGovernment" is more modest than the hyperbole - last year, just 26 per cent of people said they accessed government information and services online, up from 18 per cent the previous year and just above the EU average.
Aileen O'Toole of IT consultancy Amas says the quality of eGovernment varies enormously.
"It's a mixed bag, but some services have been transformed by the web. Anyone who can remember queuing in the rain on the Dublin quays to renew their motor tax will testify to that; this is now something you can do in three minutes online."
The Land Registry, the Companies' Registration Office and, in particular, the Revenue Commissioners have also won plaudits for their forays online.
But for every spanking new bells-and-whistles website, there are a couple of jaded, creaking public service portals that are hard to navigate and fail to provide essential information; my own bugbear is Dublin City Council's website, as impenetrable as an Amazonian forest and as clunky as an abacus.
Recent experience tells us that the management of large infrastructural projects is an area in which major difficulties have arisen (see panel), with huge cost over-runs and lengthy delays an all too frequent occurrence.
The politicians who announce major projects will invariably have moved on, or retired, by the time they come to fruition. Such is the scale of some projects that even the public officials may have switched jobs. However, in the case of ministers and public servants, a failure to keep to budget is not seen as a punishable offence. Ireland does not have a culture of resigning, and calls for "heads to roll" over project failures are seldom taken seriously.
While there is increased scrutiny of public spending by the Oireachtas, hearings of the Public Accounts Committee can seem repetitive, so often do the members wring their hands at repeated cost over-runs on significant projects.
Before the last election, Fine Gael and Labour promised they would sack ministers who wasted public money and said the budgetary process would come under greater scrutiny in a reformed Oireachtas.
However, little progress is likely so long as the issue is treated as a political football. Labour leader Pat Rabbitte's proposal that an estimates commissioner be given the job of estimating public project costs before any work is carried out could offer a solution.
Ultimately, though, taxpayers' money will continue to be wasted so long as people regard government money as less worthy of care than their own.