I HOPE that you, nurses, teachers, train-drivers, bus-drivers and gardai, have been paying attention this week. Shame on you if you haven't, because Charlie McCreevy, Mary Harney and the rest of the Hi-de-Hi gang in Merrion Street have been calling for responsibility.
And I wish that Des Geraghty down in Liberty Hall, Sean Healy over in CORI and Mike Allen of the National Organisation of the Unemployed, not to mention all those freewheeling pensioners and other layabouts, would sit up and listen.
Because, if they don't, they'll miss some fine lectures on partnership, solemnly delivered by sober-sided commentators who, as everybody knows, have only the good of the country and the interests of the poor at heart.
You should pay attention to the McCreevys and the Harneys because they have the benefit of the best advice: the Central Bank, the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners for a start.
And if they leave anything out, the retail banks, the building societies and economists can always be called in: as the taxman said, they're pillars of society, all sound on the financial question.
Unlike the nurses and teachers, bus and train-drivers, trade unionists and pensioners, they live in the real world. And they know all there is to know about responsibility and partnership.
The trouble is that, for the time being, these paragons are all holed up with the Public Accounts Committee explaining to the likes of Jim Mitchell, Pat Rabbitte and Sean Ardagh how responsibility and partnership work. And for whom. In the real world.
With this kind of expertise, and the support of their journalistic camp followers, it's no wonder the McCreevys and the Harneys begin to sound a bit out of touch.
Mr McCreevy confesses to having been terrorised by some unfriendly journalists who asked him questions about how he and Ms Harney had broken their Government's guidelines - and t'ings like that.
You may remember he once answered a question about the financial bother in the Far East: he said it wouldn't affect us; there was nothing to worry about.
Nor did he find anything worrying about reports of tax evasion and unorthodox practices at National Irish Bank. They were of little consequence in the overall scheme of things, he said.
Now, Mr McCreevy blathers on about political correctness and responsibility.
But in the real world, people have got the message: the Minister has a neck like - well, not to put too fine a point on it - Brian Cowen's.
MANY find time to watch TG4 daily and read the newspapers, if only to confirm that their ears do not deceive them or for such insights into banking as Derek McDowell presented here on Wednesday.
(The Bank of Scotland's arrival, he argued, had highlighted the extent to which hugely profitable Irish banks have been ripping us off all along.)
Michael Heney's fine Prime Time programme on Thursday brought the issue of tax evasion and non-resident accounts back home.
It showed the places where some holders of non-resident accounts live and go about their business. Miltown Malbay, for example.
And it showed that shrine of finance in Templemore where a bank manager performed a modern miracle for a couple down the road who opened 166 accounts on a single evening.
We were reminded of evidence already given by the high and holy in Finance, Revenue and the Central Bank, as well as by leaders in the business of banking, which must have knocked the stuffing out of anybody who, by now, has any confidence left.
"Well, well, well," said Pat Rabbitte as he listened to John McCloskey, late of ACC, on Tuesday. "That beats Banagher."
And it did, though it wasn't the first or only piece of evidence to do it.
Mr McCloskey, it seems, took a potential tax liability of £17 million so seriously that, although he was chief executive, he didn't attend a meeting where it was to be discussed.
And when his deputy returned he didn't ask how the discussion had gone because he knew that if there was anything to report the deputy would have told him.
ACC is a State bank. Its only shareholder is the Minister for Finance. Its former chairwoman, Gary Joyce, was told as little as possible by the management.
But she was one of many who explained that, if a bank refused to open (bogus) non-resident accounts, the clients would simply cross the road to their competitors.
NIB's former chief executive, Jim Lacey, professed to be above this sort of thing. He insisted his managers were more righteous than the rest.
But he failed to explain how many of NIB's non-resident declaration forms were incomplete and admitted that this was still the case.
By now, it should be plain to everybody that those who call for responsible behaviour by members of the working class are up to their necks in irresponsibility which makes a joke of claims to partnership.
The defenders of division in Irish society say that, when it comes to tax evasion and DIRT, people of all classes are guilty - which should make it all right.
SO THE couple with the 166 accounts in Templemore are exceptions? It's unlikely, to say the least. Indeed, it's far more likely that people holding multiple accounts are more numerous than DIRT-evaders among those who pay as they earn.
But it was all in the past, in the 1980s, when there was a culture of evasion, say the defenders of division.
Tax officials who've already given evidence disagree. One said that, because of lax regulations, it would still be possible to hide up to £600,000 in special savings accounts and get away without paying tax.
Partnership works for everybody, the defenders of division insist. It may, but only if all sides stick to the bargain and that includes the Government.
Not only are there huge differences in income, there are, as we've now seen, even greater differences in both the levels of taxation and the way the taxes are imposed.
This, in turn, affects the way in which public services are viewed by the electorate at large; the ways in which those engaged in public and private sector employment view each other.
This is not an argument between nurses and other workers or between workers, pensioners and the unemployed. It's an argument about the way in which this society works. As CORI maintains, it's about placing greater emphasis on integration between the components of a new national agreement.
And it's about ensuring that social inclusion is not thrown in as an after-thought but is seen as a central component of a new national agreement.
Mr McCreevy and his advisers are working on a national plan, but he refuses to encourage any public discussion as to what it might contain.
They're working on a budget which will affect negotiations on a national agreement - if any - and must, in turn, become part of the plan.
But the lessons now being learned at the public accounts committee cannot be ignored: they shouldn't be ignored by the social partners even if McCreevy and Harney are trying to shout them down with some self-serving nonsense of their own.