The Taoiseach believes that the Irish economic model has harnessed "the dynamism associated with the American economy with the European ethos of social partnership and cohesion," as he told the IMI last month.

How would you describe this society? It gives the greatest earnings gains and the greatest tax relief to the more skilled and better qualified. The proportion of people living in poverty relative to the rest of the population is high by EU standards and has risen over the past decade. Inequality has grown.

This is a description of Ireland in the 1990s - the same Ireland that generated all those jobs and all that wealth. What are the consequences for society of this greater inequality? Look around you. The middle classes buy second homes, the housing list soars. Money talks.

Other countries with greater equality of income use government tax and spending as a means of redistribution. They place a value on equality and legislate accordingly. They recognise that the state subsidises education and training and consider it not unreasonable that the well educated should pay more tax. Theirs is not the recently articulated philosophy of Charlie McCreevy, who apparently adheres to the view that tax is theft.

When tax-cutting began in the late 1980s, personal income tax rates were high on relatively low incomes and tax cuts were a trade-off for wage moderation. This was not a Thatcherite ideological crusade to lower taxes and cut Government intervention in the economy - Ireland was not setting out to follow the agenda of the US and the UK.

But the consequence of this strategy, combined with the effects of the boom, has been to draw Irish society inexorably in that direction. More recently, lower capital taxes and privatisations seem designed to follow the UK path to share-owning democracy.

Explicit ideology has now finally entered the picture, with the latest pronouncements from the Taoiseach and Mr McCreevy. It appears that this is to be the FF/PD agenda and in all probability the Government's platform in the next general election. If so, society is going to be faced with a critical choice.

Already when it comes to government spending to alleviate poverty, so called social protection spending, Ireland comes out poorly in EU comparisons: Ireland spent 14.4 per cent of GDP on social protection measures in 1996, compared to an EU average of 17.7 per cent.

And the Government plans to cut spending and taxation further. The Taoiseach announced his intention at the IMI to cut personal taxes to the level of "other developed English-speaking countries" - presumably the US and UK. He intends that Government spending will fall to 29 per cent of GNP (25 per cent of GDP) by 2002. Already, Irish State spending is extraordinarily low by international standards. (See State spending chart.)

These are not just economic targets that the Government has adopted. They have social consequences. An individual or a nation's sense of well-being is not solely determined by the money in people's pockets.

There is also the concept of the social wage: what we receive from the State in return for our tax, the goods that we provide more efficiently in co-operation with one another. It is a well understood concept in continental Europe where our two-tier health system, waiting lists for housing, large primary school classes, rudimentary public transport, non-existent childcare and primitive environmental protection would all look like good arguments for more, not less, government spending. Whereas Charlie McCreevy appears to have an ideological commitment to lower taxes, the Taoiseach is arguing that we need Anglo-American tax rates to compete for skilled people. Has it not occurred to him that perhaps skilled people would be attracted by a clean environment, good public transport, schools, hospitals and childcare?

More importantly, how far are we prepared to go in distorting our society in the interests of greater growth? Are we planning to be a little America in Europe? Dynamism, that's good, but inequality, poor public provisions, are those really what we want?

Critics of the Government's tax-cutting strategy have been described as pinkos or pessimists. Pinkos? Those renowned revolutionaries in IBEC think the Government should go no further in cutting personal taxes in the next Budget and regarded the last Budget as over-expansionary. Who better than employers to know how the Government's stimulus to house price rises has made it even more difficult to attract staff? The social partners had been united in seeking tax relief for the low paid.

Pessimists? The ESRI provoked the Government's wrath for voicing concerns about over-inflating the economy and the housing market and about unrealistic immigration targets. But the institute remains optimistic about our prospects provided the Government does not lose the run of itself and try to grow the economy faster than the infrastructure allows.

The ESRI's latest medium-term review envisages a half million people coming into the State over the next 15 years and the population rising to 4.3 million, its highest level since the 1860s. The Taoiseach is not too fond of forecasters at the moment but he might bear in mind that the ESRI was almost alone in forecasting the upswing of the 1990s.

At the root of the emerging debate about the kind of society we want is a historical argument about how we got here. The Government apparently places tax-cutting at the centre of its understanding.

But tax-cutting alone would not have produced the phenomenal growth of the 1990s had it not been accompanied by large flows of funds from the EU which were invested in infrastructure and education and by large flows of investment from US companies which were attracted both by the completion of the single market and by Ireland's youthful, well-educated population.

Continental Europe achieved a golden age of growth from 1950 to 1973 by the quite different formula of maintaining taxes but rewarding wage moderation with good social services. Now our circumstances have changed and with them must change the formula which has brought us success.

The Government's blind rush for growth and commitment to tax-cutting is distracting from the critical groundwork from which sustained growth will be built: genuine tax reform, the implementation of the national plan (not promising judging by the Government's appalling tardiness on public transport planning), the retention of young people in education, supporting families whether parents are at work or not. It appears largely indifferent to the spending choices which would make this a more civilised society.

Cutting taxes for the better-off to pump money into an economy where house prices are out of sight, seeking massive immigration when there are insufficient houses despite record house-building, these are the strategies of a Government which is not keeping pace with reality.

The Taoiseach spoke to the IMI about "the Irish economic model in which so many other less developed countries are interested". What about the Irish social model? Does it exist? Quality of life issues will dominate the next general election - equality included.

The articles in this series are available on the Irish Times website, Ireland.com.