I HAVE never met Bertie Ahern, but I find him intriguing. Not, I should add, in the sense in which Henry Kissinger liked to believe he was intriguing ("Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," Kissinger apparently said). But like many citizens of this State, I watch Bertie rather as I watch the weather forecast, in an effort to discern what's in store for us next.

Even members of his own party find him intriguing, it emerged in Alison O'Connor's profile in the Irish Times magazine two weeks ago. "Very few people see all of Bertie. Some people would see one 10 per cent of him while someone else would see another 10 per cent," a Fianna Fβil politician observed.

"It makes me sound like a feckin' iceberg," reflected Phoenix magazine's caricature of the Taoiseach in "My Secret Diary".

One thing we know is that Bertie is not that bumbling caricature. He came across in the profile as driven and . I suspect power isolates more often than it creates connections. Despite the endearing Everyman image friends tell me he portrayed on The Late Late Show recently, no man in touch with his Drumcondra roots would describe the health service as "excellent".

Is Napoleonic isolation what Bryan O'Brien, the Irish Times photographer, sought to convey in those stark silhouettes? I speculate about Bertie in this way only because of the power he wields in our lives.

As Fine Gael implodes before our eyes, the odds must be increasing of Bertie's returning to lead the next coalition government.

He became Taoiseach this month four years ago. Were he to follow one full term with another, he could hold the most powerful post in the State for a decade. (He would still have a way to go to beat de Valera's cumulative 17 years in the post.) Does Bertie aspire to leave his imprint on this State as de Valera did? Where does Bertie want to lead us? Has he reached the stage of his career when he wonders about his place in history? It would seem so.

"I think people will look back on this and think of it as the golden age," he told O'Connor. "I'm not saying I did it all on my own, but I was one of a number of people."

Bertie was taking pride, it seems, in being "able to change what was the story of Ireland": in the reversal of emigration and the tremendous growth in wealth and jobs over the past 14 years, for 11 of which he has been in government. He took up his first ministry, Labour, in time to help birth social partnership in 1987.

That Bertie was "one of a number of people" who contributed to the great national turnaround is unarguable. The identity and relative importance of others is a matter for another day.

The question that concerns me now remains: where does Bertie want to lead us? For a Bertie watcher, this latest meteorological report is worrisome. If this era is to be regarded retrospectively as "the golden age", what does Bertie see ahead? Is this as good as it gets? Or does he in his heart of hearts believe it can only get worse? Is this the psychology behind the recklessness of his Government's budgetary policies and the grandiosity of his stadium project? Do they reflect a belief that never again will Fianna Fβil have the resources to buy quite so many votes or erect quite so grand an edifice?

Political scientists and economists write of a "golden age" in Europe from 1950 to 1973, the period after emergence from the second World War and up to the first oil crisis. Ireland missed out on that time of growth and prosperity in Europe but, some argue, our little golden age of the 1990s has been our era of catch-up. Well, yes, in some respects.

The reversal of emigration is wonderful, the growth in jobs incredible. I recall when the Economic and Social Research Institute wrote in the 1980s that to achieve 20,000 new jobs a year would be without precedent. Now we have achieved 100,000.

It is easy to see how Bertie considers himself untouchable when he can look across the floor of the Dβil at the Opposition and contemptuously respond to their criticisms: "we will have 60,000 new jobs this year". Answer that, his demeanour demands.

There is an answer, and the next election will be fought over it. In the European league, the Republic has experienced only a silver age. In Europe's golden age, the great growth in prosperity went not to lower tax rates but to increase social and infrastructural spending. That is why many continental countries have enviable health care, childcare, education, housing and public transport.

Five years later, a friend is still waiting for the operation that will liberate her from a disabling condition. Young parents commute across half the country, estranged from their growing infants, in thrall to bricks and mortar, as they so chillingly described on RT╔ Radio 1's Ties That Bind series last week.

It is foolhardy for anyone who aspires to lead us in this millennium to tell us that what we have is as good as it gets. We don't have far to look to know how much better it could be.

mawren@irish-times.ie

Maev-Ann Wren is taking leave to write a book about the health-care crisis. "From the Doorstep" will return in the autumn