It was a week in which the good, the bad and the ugly jostled for attention. But even the good news was suspect - in some surprising quarters.
The Government and its friends have learned to live with the bad and the ugly, mostly by shutting up or looking busy or hoping that if they don't react no one else will.
So they feel they can ride out the crisis in housing by referring all problems to the law, the market and the industry.
Building workers complaining about conditions in their industry, including tax evasion and a wretched safety record, are jailed for contempt of court.
Another court turns down a couple's case against a builder who's put the house they thought was theirs beyond their reach by adding £20,000 to the price.
Members of the Government huffed a little, puffed a lot and left the rest to the Construction Industry Federation and the amusingly-titled Home Builders' Association.
The association promises to introduce a code of conduct. A voluntary code, with fearsome sanctions: anyone who breaks it will not be allowed to claim they abide by it.
There's a threat for you, in an industry whose hardchaw reputation is second only to that of the beef processors (another outfit with a predilection for sub-contractors).
Some of the federation's leading members are well in with the Government. That's no surprise: their interests coincide, as the EU will discover when it examines the urban renewal schemes to which the Community has already contributed so much.
The builders are grateful, of course; and it shows, in the lists of political contributions. It's easy to see why builders, developers and allied trades have been known for years as the industrial wing of Fianna Fail.
It was an unhappy coincidence for the party that the week's bad and ugly news included a reminder of another crossroads at which politics, business and the need for housing intersect.
There was a preliminary sitting of the Flood tribunal, soon to hold the first public hearings of its inquiry into the affairs of Mr Ray Burke and land rezoning in north Dublin.
There's a growing public insistence on disclosure and accountability, but increasing frustration at the pace of events and the inconclusive nature of some inquiries.
This may have been why the Public Accounts Committee's return to the Dail with an interim report on the AIB affair was welcomed by deputies of all persuasions.
It may also have been why the Dail so quickly agreed to the committee's request for a thorough investigation by the Comptroller and Auditor General and more powers for the committee itself.
The speed and authority of the committee's investigation so far have done much for politics: a reminder to their critics that it's foolish to lump parties or, indeed, politicians under a blanket of destructive criticism.
Sadly, the Government's response was less impressive. Denis Coghlan warned in The Irish Times on Wednesday that the regulatory watchdog which Ms Mary Harney seemed to want might turn out to be a poodle.
It did. In spite of the work that she and the Minister for Finance were supposed to have put into the project, all they've come up with is something called an implementation group.
The group's function is still unclear. Like the work the Ministers have been doing since Ansbacher, National Irish Bank and other unfinished business made their mission necessary.
Now they've got a group of mandarins at their service. With that tribune of the people, Mr Michael McDowell, at their head. Come back, Adam Smith. Your day has come.
The Government, of course, is more worried about the state of the economy.
Well, not so much the state of the economy in the old sense as the confirmation of its success in a report from an unimpeachable source, the Commission of the European Union.
Ministers, you'd have thought, might have permitted themselves a moment's relaxation to bask in the glow when it was published on Tuesday. (Governments do when things go well, whether or not they've had anything to do with the case).
Well, you'd be wrong: the Government and some leading economists were far from pleased.
First, they were cautious. Then they turned sour.
Before the week was out, they were deeply suspicious that someone was out to get them.
Growth in the economy, the EU had judged, would be 11.4 per cent by the end of the year, 8 per cent in 1999, 9 per cent in 2000. Streets ahead of the EU average.
Our levels of unemployment and borrowing also stand in sharp contrast to those of other EU states; and where they run deficits, Ireland has a snug budgetary surplus.
Only on inflation is our performance below par; and it's likely to remain so for the next two years, during which our level will rise to 3.3 per cent while the EU average is expected to reach no more than 1.7 per cent.
But why should such a glowing financial report startle the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, or economists like Mr Jim O'Leary and Mr Jim Power, to whose views banks and brokers pay attention?
Maybe they're afraid that people other than banks and brokers are listening. Nurses, perhaps, who want the Government to honour its promises?
Old people or those on fixed incomes who worry about the sliding value of their savings?
Farmers who think they should be allowed to enjoy supplementary benefits?
In the flurry which followed the EU publication, Mr O'Leary announced that he suspected the Commission's motives.
His reasoning was political: he thought the Commission had an eye on Ireland's aid from EU structural funds. The better off we seem, the less we'll need.
The idea of such a conspiracy of foreigners - economists and all - so amused Tommie Gorman of RTE that, in a moment of rare but splendid hilarity, he conjured a picture of Mr O'Leary as Father Ted, writing in the Skibbereen Eagle. Mr McCreevy was struck by an even rarer insight. He cited two features to support his doubts about the Commission's figures: economic difficulties in the wider world and common sense.
But his own attitude to the crisis in the Far East has been indifferent. As for common sense, it has played an even smaller part in the Government's decisions of late than reform or justice.
The fact is that the economic conditions on which the EU has reported present the Government, the parties and the society with choices and challenges which are ours and ours alone.
Our most serious problems are not those of EU funding or the Commission's decisions but of how our affairs are managed and our resources used or shared by ourselves.
If the economic successes of the 1990s are plain to be seen, so are the contrasts and contradictions, for which we, our politicians and institutions are responsible.
Some, of course, never learn to take the smooth with the rough.