When it came to economics and fiscal matters, the electorate was sold a pup, argues Michael Casey.
Elections, like markets, only function properly when there is perfect information. Candidates running in an election promise to provide services to people who will reward them with their votes (and sometimes donations).
For the market to work well, the promises must be sincere and the information on which they are based must be correct and unequivocal. In the recent election this was lacking.
The greatest myth is the notion that any government can manage the economy so as to create jobs and promote development. The reality is that no Irish government has much influence on the economy as a whole. The government has absolutely no control over interest or exchange rates, or indeed over population growth.
The effects of fiscal policy are uncertain, especially in an open economy and where it seems to be impossible to forecast government revenue accurately. Non-government experts and specialised agencies generally make the important decisions about infrastructure and the attraction of foreign industry.
Ireland, as we know, is one of the most globalised economies in the world. In some periods it will benefit from global trends and at other times it will suffer. There is extremely little that any government can do to modify the effects of these global trends or indeed to influence factors like population growth.
Yet much of the debate in the recent election was about what different parties had done or would do for the economy and this was regarded as one of the most important "policy issues" which needed to be discussed. This was misleading - whether by accident or design.
If and when the economy weakens in the next few years, it will be interesting to see what the then government will be able to do to turn it around. The answer is: very little.
The information content of the debates on the different sectors of the economy - health, justice and policing, transport - was also poor. The emphasis in virtually all cases was on providing more resources, beds or manpower, without reference to the structural problems inherent in these sectors.
It was assumed that the latter would be too complicated for the public to grasp and perhaps too dangerous for the politicians to discuss. The other reason, of course, is that no one really knows what is wrong with these sectors. The basic analysis hasn't been done; there is no agreed diagnosis.
In the health sector, for example, the Health Service Executive does not believe that more resources are the answer while most health professionals would disagree. There is still substantial disagreement about the best location for the new children's hospital in Dublin. Bad information and poor analysis give rise to rash promises which mislead the electorate.
Most parties went along with the notion that personal ethics were distracting attention from the "important policy issues", yet no one bothered to remind the electorate that there just might be a connection between personal moral codes and the actual delivery of promised public goods, efficiently and at lowest cost.
The "debate" on stamp duty was misleading. Relief for the first-time house-buyer became such a catch-cry that no party could resist jumping on the band-wagon. All previous reservations about lining builders' pockets were immediately dropped.
Promised tax reductions came so thick and fast (without any reductions in expenditure) that the electorate began to wonder how the circle could be squared.
The standard answer was that more revenue could be found by improving the efficiency of public service provision (though how, we were not told). The alternative of increased government borrowing (which would pile public debt on top of crippling personal debt) was never mentioned - though this is the most probable outcome.
The other disingenuous aspect of the tax "debate" was the almost complete lack of reference to indirect taxes which are undermining consumers and businesses alike. Since these are essentially stealth taxes, it was probably considered best to keep them off the agenda.
Costing the different programmes was done fairly diligently but in most cases the assumptions on which the costings were based were not spelled out. In more than one case, costings were criticised because they were based on existing programmes which themselves were not explicit. So, the realism of the figures became even more questionable.
There were also many areas where no information was given. There was nothing on consumerism, so consumers will continue to be ignored as they have been since the foundation of the State.
There was nothing on reforming the system of social partnership, including the bench-marking process. There was no debate on the crucial question of whether Ireland Inc can move into the information age in time to protect high value-added jobs. There was nothing on public sector reform, all 800 agencies, most of which are run by political appointees.
To return to the market analogy, the election was imperfect because of the lack of information provided to the voter - the consumer of public goods and services. Like most markets this one operated to maximise private profit, ie the election of its members, and had little regard to public profit or the national interest.
If private-sector entrepreneurs engaged in the same manipulation of information, they would be taken to task by various regulatory bodies. Lack of information in the election market strikes at the roots of democracy. The real problem is that the voter can't shop around for another five years.
Michael Casey is a former chief economist of the Central Bank and board member of the International Monetary Fund