It was a very wet year in 1979. But similarities with conditions in 2002 don't stop there. The government elected in 1977 had the biggest majority and the most popular Taoiseach in the history of the state. Jack Lynch was to be described - by his long-time opponent, Liam Cosgrave - as the most popular politician since Daniel O'Connell.
Fianna Fáil was in better shape than it had ever been. With luck, it seemed, the party would be in office for two, three or four terms, maybe until the turn of the century.
There were some obvious snags. One was the size of the majority: it was big enough to allow opposition to the leadership to fester and grow on the back benches. Then, the manifesto on which the historic majority had been won was founded on a questionable premise: that it was possible to spend our way out of recession.
So the government had embarked on a spectacular programme designed to encourage spending by promoting growth and employment. The programme's most striking features were the abolition of rates on houses and a dramatic reduction in road tax on cars. These, we were told, were the pump-priming measures the economy needed.
Two years later it was beginning to dawn on us that the manifesto hadn't worked. And, to make matters worse, Ireland had been hit, for the second time in seven years, by a paralysing international oil crisis.
I wrote about it here in a piece which began: "On the third and final day of summer it rained. But that was the least of the government's worries in the Land of Nod. Oil supplies were running short, both at home and in the streets, which left the citizens cold and bad-tempered. Fights had broken out where they queued to fill their cars with petrol.
"The post was no longer delivered and hadn't been for months, because the people who used to deliver it refused to go on starving on the wages the government paid.
"The telephones, which had never worked well, had ceased to ring altogether in many parts of the country. Some said this might have been just as well, since it stopped the spread of bad news. And none of the news was good in the Land of Nod on the third and final day of summer, especially for the government."
The worst, as the cabinet was about to hear, was not the queues at the filling stations, or the sound of public services grinding to a halt; it was the news that the State now had two chiefs of police. This was because the Supreme Court had decided that the government's attempt to fire the old Garda commissioner was unconstitutional. To make matters worse, the new man was already in office.
But, as it happened, this bizarre turn of events simply confirmed that, when things start to go wrong for a party or government, there's no knowing where the rot will stop. And in the wintry summer of '79 the rot had already set in.
The government lost heavily in the European elections and was soon to lose two critical by-elections in Cork. The ministers who were closest to Lynch advised him to resign and, when he did, they lost the leadership. Charles Haughey was leader and Taoiseach by the end of the year.
The reign which led directly or indirectly to the McCracken, Moriarty and Flood tribunals and to the Ansbacher and DIRT inquiries had begun.
Some who look to the United States and the scandals of Enron, WorldCom, Xerox and Arthur Andersen say it couldn't happen in this State. And in a sense it's true: we do things differently here.
JOHN Kenneth Galbraith, interviewed lately in the London Independent, attributed the American problem in part to corporations which had grown so complex that they were almost beyond monitoring. (The interview was reproduced in the Irish Independent on Thursday.) The corporations, said Galbraith, "have grown out of effective control by the owners, the stockholders, into nearly absolute control by the management and the individuals recruited by management."
Management, in turn, had set its own rewards at fantastic levels: such was their power that until they carried their behaviour to extremes and the companies collapsed "there was almost no complaint from the shareholders - the owners".
In this State, scandals have followed a different course: political cover is provided for certain owners and controllers of big business (usually home-grown) when they choose to break the law or act as if it didn't apply to them. This was what lay at the rotten core of Ansbacher. Des Traynor was able to operate an illegal bank from the offices of CRH because he was Haughey's adviser and Haughey availed of its services. Others well known in politics and business followed his example.
As certain businessmen, politicians and accountants still insist, tax evasion and breach of exchange were taken for granted. They followed the patterns set by the political and business leadership. They were part of the culture of the time.
So were the failures of the regulatory system and the rampant hypocrisy of those who preached austerity for those who couldn't escape taxation but connived at the fraudulent practices of those who could. The crooked accountants and lawyers aren't all in the US.
Looking back, it would be wrong to exaggerate the comparisons between 1979 and 2002. But it would be foolish to pretend that the FF-PD appeal to the electorate this year was not as dodgy as the manifesto of 1977. Bertie Ahern and Charlie McCreevy were among the TDs swept into the Dáil in 1977. Ahern was to become Haughey's chief whip and favourite son. McCreevy, like the newly nominated senator Mary Harney, joined the resolute anti-Haugheyites inside the party until she left to found the PDs.
But when the profligacy of the 1970s led inevitably to the crippling of the public services after 1987, McCreevy was the man who cut the welfare services.
And where were Ahern and McCreevy this week? McCreevy was burbling on about miracles, and Ahern, pint in hand, was opening a pub. The sound around them was of chickens coming home to roost.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie