The death of ideology has been announced at regular intervals since the end of the 1980s. The reports were premature. Ideology hasn't died; it has changed colours.
The certainty which was a feature of the left, from Stalin to Scargill, has been discredited. Indeed, it has discredited itself. But the claim to universal truth is raised by others. The new right looks to the market, not the state, for answers; and to economics, not politics, for the key to the future.
The economic model the new right follows is the United States, not the European Union. Even reformist versions of social democracy, as practised in Sweden, are too radical by half.
If the emphasis on the US seems vaguely familiar, it may be because you are old enough to remember pipe-dreams of the 1950s about the Republic's becoming the 50th state of the union. That was when it looked as if all else had failed and the low grey clouds of the Cold War still hung over us. Anyone suggesting that we might one day join the Common Market, Europe's coal and steel communities, would be laughed out of court.
But the young fogeys of the new right, whose adherents have come more clearly into view since Charlie McCreevy's Budget and the Ryanair dispute, are not too worried about being thought old-fashioned. Their motto sounds as if it had been devised during the (first) industrial revolution: Give capitalism a chance.
Now, no one on the left doubts the importance of investment and enterprise, risktaking and managerial competence, in the Republic's economic successes of the 1990s.
And politicians of all shades also recognise the importance of partnership; specifically, the series of agreements between employers, unions, farmers and governments which began under Fianna Fail's minority administration in 1987.
But the new right has little time for politicians and, it became increasingly obvious as the argument about Ryanair dragged on, sees partnership as a brake on the full-blooded buccaneers of the marketplace.
The disagreement over partnership runs deep. Those who support it, and they are not confined to the unions and the left, recognise that, as in politics, no party in the wider world can expect to have everything its own way.
The left has had to come to terms with this reality. The new right has not. It refuses to recognise that the end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Stalinism were not the end of history.
Partnership depends on each partner's acknowledgment of the others' right to a view of society and how it should be organised. Since the new right refuses to recognise society's existence, it finds it impossible to debate its organisation.
The left, and many who occupy the middle ground, do not accept that the only relationships are between producers and consumers, employers and employees, the markets and those who can afford to avail of them.
Social relationships, the left insists, are not confined to economics; and, in spite of the dominance of the market, there is more to the lives of communities than corporate profits and losses.
The new right's doubts about the merits of partnership are accompanied by claims that the market, on its own, without state aid or impediment, can provide more efficient and fairer results.
This may seem academic, remote from the everyday concerns of the public. Not so: this week, attention turned to Brussels and Belfast and the imminence of decisions which will have lasting effects.
As it suddenly dawns on the electorate that rhetorical chips are about to be cashed, the relevance of partnership and the meaning of interdependence will be driven home.
It has been easy to think of ourselves as good Europeans while the structural funds flowed in. How will it be when EU aid goes, as it must, to those who need it more, in central and eastern Europe?
The Government's initial response has been to announce that Bertie Ahern, Joe Walsh and their colleagues will fight to keep Ireland's share of structural funds as long as possible.
When the struggle is over and our funding falls to more realistic figures, what then? John Bruton sensibly proposes a 10-year plan to make the most of our own resources and the advances we've made since 1973.
One demand the EU has made on us is the production of plans to guide our infrastructural development, using the funds provided by the Community.
A stable feature of any plan we write now must be the maintenance and development of the partnership which has contributed so much to our economic success since 1987. Far from trimming to suit the ideological demands of the new right, what it needs is expansion to embrace the social elements which most programmes since Lemass's time have lacked.
Looking North, our leaders have invariably tailored their rhetoric to the assumption that we really do see life in an all-Ireland light and will readily do whatever it takes to bring North and South closer together.
Here, too, the electorate as well as the politicians are challenged by old claims of partnership, interdependence and willingness to change. Memories of southern leaders' grand invitations to unionists come flooding back. They'd be surprised, they were told, by how generous we could be.
And wasn't there an offer of a share of the government's seats in a practical demonstration of the power-sharing we hoped they'd introduce in Northern Ireland?
Power-sharing, partnership and interdependence were words used by party leaders and spokesmen, ministers and their opponents across the floor, to convince the electorate of their willingness to compromise.
Those who made such promises must be reminded of them, again and again.
Hugh Coveney was someone who didn't need to be reminded of the promises he'd made. He was, in every sense, a gentle man; trusting and honourable.
His family, his party and his city will remember him with pride.