THERE was a time, the idea of a Labour Minister in control of the State's finances was all but unthinkable.
Now, the only questions raised in advance of Ruairi Quinn's third Budget are about the strategy that exception growth makes possible and the tactics he's likely to adopt in an election year.
So far the difference between his approach and that of his predecessors has been one of emphasis - more evident in the detail than in the broad sweep of the measures proposed.
Even his critics acknowledge that, while they might come to the task from radically different angles, they find Mr Quinn's outline broadly acceptable.
Michael McDowell, for instance, has set his face against any partnership that includes Labour or Democratic Left - the untouchables of the political caste system devised by the Progressive Democrats.
But, like Fianna Fail, he accepts the bones of the Budget and of a social and economic programme, Partnership 2000, written by the tripartite, centre left coalition in which Labour and Democratic Left are partners.
Changed times. But then, as we learned at the end of last year, even the representatives of Dunnes Stores have been obliged to discuss the family's fortunes with officials answerable to a Labour Minister.
Changed times indeed. The question is are they likely to stay changed? Some believed two years ago that if John Bruton embarked on a partnership with Dick Spring and Proinsias De Rossa, the sky must fall. Are they now convinced that it ain't necessarily so?
They warned of the risks they expected to accompany a centre left coalition failure to agree on a set of mutually acceptable policies, followed by ideological wrangling and petty personal rivalries.
Whether the ideological wrangles masked the personal rivalry or vice versa was something the commentators might unravel at their leisure.
Some of them settled down to what they expected would be a diet of lies, leaks and contradictions pronouncements from exotic points on the political compass to spice up the local stuff and, creaking away in the backgrounds, the splintering timbers of imminent and inevitable collapse.
THE Fianna Fail Labour coalitions had come to grief.
How could this patched up little arrangement survive its own, inherent instability, let alone the assaults of a determined and experienced Opposition?
The economy would suffer. Prudence would be abandoned. Scatter brained schemes would be introduced on the spur of the moment to satisfy some eccentric ministerial whim. And the Coalition's successors would be left to pick up the pieces.
This is not the tale that Mr Quinn has to tell when he addresses the Dail on Wednesday. In little more than two years there has been one grievous failure of judgment and some lamentable fumbles by the Government. Those who bet on disaster have been disappointed.
But if Mr Bruton, Mr Quinn and their colleagues imagine that it's going to be plain sailing from the Budget to the election - and so back to Merrion Street - they should think again.
If they believe that public opinion, now running against them, is about to turn with the Budget, they may not have reckoned with all of the forces which would prefer a government of a different hue - centre right rather than centre left.
The Government will also find itself at the receiving end of what may be described as the political equivalent of road race - a furious resentment at society in general which seems to fasten indiscriminately on politics and politicians. It's bound to find its biggest target in the government of the day.
First, though, there's the more thoughtful opposition.
Last week I wrote here about the dominance of Tony O'Reilly in the Irish newspaper industry. His products account for two thirds of the 546,900 national morning and evening papers sold in this State.
They also account for 95 per cent of the 755,000 Irish papers sold on Sundays. And the Independent group owns 10 regional weekly newspapers - with average sales of 10,000 apiece.
This provides Dr O'Reilly with unique access to the electorate and potential influence on public opinion of a kind which his old enemy, Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sun, the London Times and the Sunday Times, might envy.
For this reason I was surprised that the stance adopted by Dr O'Reilly and hf papers had not been more widely discussed, indeed had rarely been the subject of comment or analysis in any form.
I was even more surprised during the week to discover that several journalists, including some who work for the O'Reilly papers, hadn't realised the extent of their dominance, let alone reflected on the impact of such power on public affairs.
As to where (or how) he fitted into Irish politics, no one seemed quite sure. Dr O'Reilly's own views on the subject, as in the interview published in the Irish Independent yesterday, sound like instructions delivered from afar.
TO MANY, it seems, Dr O'Reilly is first and foremost a businessman. A businessman, indeed, who was once promised high office here, and turned it down who might even have been seen as a contender for a cabinet post in the United States.
But his views on Irish politics are unmistakable, both for his opposition to campaigns of violence of any kind and for his dedication to market economics in the vigorous style of the Progressive Democrats.
One of the rare commentaries on his role in Irish life, a penetrating essay by Fintan O'Toole published a year ago in Granta, offers a telling insight into his views on newspapers and their owners' influence.
During the oil rush of the early 1980s his geologist had chosen six blocks of seabed for exploration. And, he told Forbes magazine in what Fintan O'Toole calls a rare moment of genuine indiscretion:
"Since I own 35 per cent of the newspapers in Ireland I have close contact with the politicians. I got the blocks he (the geologist) wanted.
He owns more than 35 per cent now, and there's no doubt that if he gets what he wants in 1997, as he did in 1983, whatever Ruairi Quinn may do, the centre left coalition will not be returned to power.
The Progressive Democrats, of course, are pressing ahead with their own campaign to help those who help themselves, based on the Far Eastern models enthusiastically recommended by Mary Harney and Michael McDowell.
"In Hong Kong, for example, a very successful economy, people work for low wages, said Ms Harney in her 1994 conference speech. "They're not rich, but they're happy and they cope. They've dignity and self esteem and they have independence. I think we should look for a few examples there."
Independence? Dignity? Well, as my grandfather used to say, though he'd never heard of Mr McDowell, "for the love of Mike".
I suppose you've noticed that one million of the poor but happy South Koreans took to the streets this week to show how they felt about their government's latest shot at industrial relations.
And Dr O'Reilly may be interested to learn from the international journalism magazine, IPI Report, that an attempt is being made to restrict the capacity of Korean conglomerates to buy papers to enhance press freedom.