TEN years ago this country was going down the tubes. The national debt was 130 per cent of GNP and we were adding 13 points a year to it.
There was gross tax avoidance, debilitating unemployment and income tax rates ranging from 35 to 58 per cent.
A lack of fiscal, social and political discipline caused the problems. And, as successive governments struggled unavailingly to prevent living standards falling, people became disillusioned and depressed.
Then the Progressive Democrats happened. The core message of tax reform and cuts in public spending which Des O'Malley advocated shook Fianna Fail and the Fine Gael/Labour Party coalition to their roots. And, as the mould breaking political machine advanced, the two main parties took protective action.
By the time Charlie Haughey led a minority Fianna Fail government into power in 1987, the political landscape had been transformed. Fiscal rectitude was the name of the game, and a programme for national recovery was endorsed by trade unions, employers and the government.
In the intervening years Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the Progressive Democrats and Democratic Left have all shared in government. Two other national contracts were forged to provide for growth, stability and low inflation.
The Maastricht guidelines for EMU helped to ensure discipline. But the glue of social cohesion, which bonded people together in hard times, is beginning to wear thin.
There is a growing tendency to revert to the slap dash policies and unabashed selfishness which led us to that economic cliff edge in 1986.
The abolition of domestic rates and car tax in 1977, reflected a definite political drift which included the abolition of death duties in 1974, and of agricultural rates in 1984.
Taxes on wealth and property were eroded or abolished, and the resulting shortfall was made up by the PAYE sector.
With a general election due next year, the roundabout has come full circle. There are echoes of the 1970s at Leinster House as political parties, come under pressure for tax cuts.
People are becoming greedy. Discipline is evaporating. And politicians are talking about "tax reductions" instead of "tax reforms".
TEN years of growth rates averaging 4 per cent has lifted the boats of all those at work. In real terms, the spending power of an industrial worker has risen by 18 per cent in the past decade. But the managerial class fared best.
A different picture is to be seen in the blighted areas surrounding our major cities, where unemployment is endemic and communities are riven by crime, poverty and drug taking.
These are the "have nots"; the people who suffered most in the original cutbacks, the people who were promised that, in good times, they would be helped.
The good times are here. And it is time to deliver on long standing commitments.
Rather than feed the growing appetite of the better off for tax cuts, politicians, trade unionists and employers should follow the example of Germany and concentrate on the need for job creation, linked to social discipline. There isn't much time.
The whiff of middle class excess can be detected in roaring property prices.
Top of the market homes in Dublin are clearing £300,000 on a regular basis and are dragging lower priced properties upwards in their wake. Banks and building societies are shovelling money at their customers, offering loans of up to 100 per cent in certain cases.
Last December, before the market went mad, Ruairi Quinn spoke of the need to monitor prices and avoid inflationary tendencies.
Home prices are now being pushed beyond the reach of many newly married couples; desperate financial and psychological strains are being placed on others, and the market is fuelling demands for higher wages to pay exorbitant mortgages.
There is no real benefit to society here. And Mr Quinn should now direct financial agencies to limit credit to the more traditional 80 per cent of house prices.
The surge in prices has been paralleled by growing militancy among state employees, especially by teachers, nurses and civil servants, who are threatening to reject the disciplines agreed within the Programme for Competitiveness and Work.
There is a great deal of public sympathy for nurses, whose commitment to their patients was exploited by employers in the past. But claims must accord with the national interest and ensure fair and equitable treatment for all.
Unemployment is our greatest problem. More than 281,000 people are now on the dole, at a cost to the State of roughly £3 million per thousand.
Cutting the unemployment rate to 5 per cent would free about £660 million a year and provide extra taxes from those newly at work.
GIVEN the magnitude of the task and the rewards that success spread right across society, it is pitiful to see political parties concentrating their energies on promises to abolish the residential property tax. As Michael McDowell himself admits: "VAT on ice cream brings in more money.
It's all sleight of politics. Even those parties which advocate the removal of the RPT are committed to its replacement by some form of local charge, or property tax. It is only a case of spreading the load wider.
Brendan Howlin will receive a consultant's report on local charges from KPMG "very soon". But the Government is unlikely to take any action this side of a general election.
That "frozen in the headlights" response to the introduction of new taxation measures has been a common feature in all recent government.
It is easy to remove taxes; highly dangerous to impose them. And, as the political parties go on an election footing, soft options are being considered.
The abolition of employee PRSI charges is one such idea, along with the capping of all income taxes at a maximum of 40 per cent.
The fable of the cricket and the grasshopper comes to mind. In Germany, the social security contributions of employers and employees amount to 41 per cent of gross pay; here they are about 20 per cent.
A proposal to cap income tax at 40 per cent, with an initial rate of 20 per cent, is attractive. But low paid employees and those without jobs would benefit far more from a lifting of the threshold at which tax is paid, and from an "expansion of the tax bands.
Reducing tax rate levels, while leaving tax bands unchanged, simply transfers more wealth up the line.
We have come a long way in 10 years. We still face difficult, but greatly reduced, problems.
The rigours accepted during the past decade were underpinned by all Dail parties. And the results are formidable: a national debt reduced to 80 per cent of GNP; low inflation and interest rates; rising standards of living; and the greatest number of people at work since the 1930s.
During all that time, the unemployed were told to wait. They were given no option. But now, in this rapid growth phase, the broad needs of society must be addressed.
To falter and slip back to the soft, indulgent policies of the 1970s would be a disaster. We should finish the job begun in 1987.