What was most surprising about the coverage of the Cabinet's Ballymascanlon outing this week was that anyone was surprised at the result. Given the nature of the Government, which is firmly centre-right, and the nature of the conflict, between finance and public service, the interests of finance were bound to come first.
Of course Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats were anxious to show that theirs was a caring Coalition, at any rate one which realised that health was bound to be a major issue in the next general election. But it was even more determined to keep taxes down; to meet what Charlie McCreevy regards as its unbreakable commitment to the electorate.
The public had bought the message when it was carried by the Irish Independent in a front-page editorial on the eve of the 1997 election: "It's payback time".
And McCreevy delivered on the promise in every budget since. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Our public services are the shoddiest in the European Union. Our capital and corporate taxes are the lowest. But, as the polls keep reminding us, the public's reaction hovers between approval and indifference. Look at this week's Irish Times/MRBI survey: almost 60 per cent are satisfied with the Government, a rating which hasn't changed since the Budget.
Fianna Fail's core vote, however, remains - as in the 1992 and 1997 elections - at 39 per cent. Adjusted, it stands at 42 per cent. But there's support for the thesis that there is approval of the McCreevy line in Mary Harney's rating. At 59 per cent, it's up five points since January.
Micheal Martin, whether from conviction or a sense of responsibility to his Department, doesn't follow the AhernHarney-McCreevy line. He certainly did what he could to convince a weary public that the FF-PD partnership was a caring Government on the brink of reforming the health service after four years in office. He'd got a message that was different from McCreevy's. It had come from nurses, doctors, patients, many trade unions and most non-governmental organisations. The kind of people on whom the State depends not only to provide State services but to supply voluntary services when the State falls down on the job.
The case they made was supported by evidence from the Economic and Social Research Institute and by the example of other EU states whose health services showed what could be done once a government had the will to do it.
Labour and Fine Gael had produced programmes to which Government spokesmen managed little more than a feeble response. Martin acknowledged the state of the services and the need for reform, planning and investment. He admitted the failures of his predecessors of all parties, including his own.
Now it was a question of making up, not only for decades in which ministers pleaded poverty, but for four years of culpable neglect in what is one of the richest states in the world. The only excuse for a Minister for Health is that the Government and its leader refuse to back him.
So it is with Micheal Martin. Whether he persuaded the public of his concern for the health services remains to be seen. What is clear is that he failed to convince Bertie Ahern and his colleagues that we could have a decent service - if they had the guts to deliver it.
INSTEAD, they stuck to the policies chosen by their predecessors in 1987, when the public services were sacrificed to financial interests and the future of the most corrupt government it has been our misfortune to endure.
It was a government led by Charles Haughey, its erstwhile members now best known for their tribunal appearances and shifty cronies. The policies for which it is still praised by right-wing commentators showed an indifference to the citizens who depended on the services it destroyed.
Now that public services are again at the centre of political debate here as in Britain, it's clear that the Coalition stands closer to the politics and policies of the late 1980s and early 1990s than to the urgent needs of 2001.
The British election is about changing politics from hard-right to centre-left. Centre-left forces in this State have yet to show that they appreciate the depth of the challenge they face, let alone that they have the spirit and determination to meet it.
Fine Gael must show that its four-point gain in this week's poll is merely the beginning of a recovery and that the change of leadership really marks a change of direction. For nothing less than a centre-left alternative to the Coalition will make a difference to this society. Labour must use the competition from Sinn Fein to sharpen its edge, especially in Dublin and among the young workers and unemployed who make up most of Sinn Fein's supporters.
It's not as if the party lacks issues in a society in which housing, health, education and transport are in crisis. In which one of the national pastimes is watching Sir Anthony O'Reilly, Denis O'Brien and Dermot Desmond in their tug-of-loot over Eircom, a company which used to be ours.
What's the point of complaining about poorly-funded services if you're going to sit and watch another amnesty being offered to tax dodgers? And as some of the world's richest corporations try to make up their minds on whether Ireland or the Cayman Islands offers the best pickings as a tax haven.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie