Two of the biggest political achievements of the past 20 years have been bringing peace to Northern Ireland and the institution of a sustainable system of social partnership.
One country in which social partnership is most solidly and longest established is Austria. In adopting the model since 1987, as a means of overcoming persistent and disappointing national under-performance, Ireland has proved itself in this respect closer to Vienna than to Chicago, demonstrating attachment to the European social model, not just the Anglo-American economic one.
Reality never conforms to one ideal-type, and the hybrid model we have developed over the past 20 years has great interest for any country faced with some catching up to do.
The trade union movement in the mid-1980s, shorn of Keynesian illusions, was determined to avoid the fate of its counterpart in Britain under Mrs Thatcher. Conceiving of industrial relations as a form of class warfare, where however the war had to be fought with a democratic government, simply led sooner or later to defeat.
Even after nearly 10 years of New Labour, British trade unions do not enjoy anything like the influence, access to government, or public trust of their Irish counterparts.
It took 40 years to find the right formula. Seán Lemass was convinced of the value of tripartite arrangements, involving government, employers and trade unions, beginning with the establishment of the Labour Court in 1946.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were about a dozen national wage agreements, which neither solved the problem of inflation nor prevented large-scale strikes. They culminated in the broader national understandings of 1979-80, which were blamed for contributing to escalating national indebtedness.
For a time in the 1980s, the setting of parameters by economists was attempted, but trade unions do not easily bow before tablets of stone carrying down economic commandments, which are not a substitute for direct participation in analysis, negotiation and consensus-building.
No one claims that social partnership is the sole factor in the economic transformation of Ireland since 1987. The strong fiscal correction which accompanied it was equally essential, as were certain development initiatives undertaken at a time of great stringency. Would anyone then have credited the International Financial Services Centre nearly 20 years on accounting for some 17,600 jobs and hundreds of millions of tax revenue?
As a recent Austrian study put it (Karlhofer & Tálos, 2005), "the central rule in social partnership is that the participating players subordinate pursuit of short-term advantage to continuity and predictability".
The results, to which social partnership here have contributed so much, are hugely impressive; a near doubling of employment, a large rise in real incomes, a substantial fall in the personal and corporate tax burden, super-healthy public finances, and increases in social and infrastructural spending on a scale previously undreamt of. The resources are there to take on major priorities.
Right-wing critics claim partnership is undemocratic, as if democracy consisted only of parliamentary majority rule, rather than multi-layered participation in public affairs. While nominally Seanad Éireann is composed along corporatist lines, social partnership is much closer to the real thing. It is corporatism as an extra dimension to democracy, rather than as a substitute for it as envisaged by some in the 1930s.
Social partnership is beneficial to employers, as it gives them greater certainty both on labour costs and industrial peace. It is beneficial to trade unions as a means of ensuring that the gains they negotiate are not just nominal but real. It also gives them an input into a range of non-pay issues affecting employee welfare. It is beneficial to farmers as a means of coping with the recurring threats and challenges facing their sector.
It also draws in the concerns of the community and voluntary sector, speaking for those without economic clout of their own.
Social partnership is beneficial to the country as a whole, as it provides outside investors with a reasonable guarantee of stability and predictability.
Its importance is not just in settling pay, or even setting out a balanced broader economic and social programme, but also as a mechanism for crisis management.
New partnership negotiations are a great opportunity to work out an intelligent, comprehensive and balanced response to the challenges now facing us. A certain amount of street theatre always accompanies the process, as different partners parade their zeal to their own constituencies in driving out improbable worst-case scenarios.
The real challenge on this occasion will be for employers and trade unions to try to understand each other's fears and concerns; on the one hand, about potential displacement and the flouting of voluntary agreements and laws about conditions of employment; and, on the other hand, about being totally hamstrung and weighed down by whole new rafts of regulations and newly- invented compliance requirements. Partnership is not a zero-sum game. Where creative solutions can be found, everyone gains.
Partnership in Ireland owes a lot to political leadership, especially the long-standing commitment and superb negotiating and conflict resolution skills of the Taoiseach.
It also owes much to the day-in, day-out commitment and conviction shown by senior Government officials led by Dermot McCarthy, secretary-general in the Taoiseach's Department; and key negotiators from the unions, farm, employer and voluntary organisations, some of whom have been there from the beginning.
Social partnership could be seen as a manifestation of Catholic and indeed Christian social philosophy at its best, something that also inspired the EU's great commission president Jacques Delors, and our linked constitutional provisions on the natural right to private property being made consistent with principles of social justice and the needs of the common good. Social partnership is the best way of achieving a wealthy and inclusive social market economy.
The advent of social partnership coincided here with the demise of single-party government. It has given the main groups in society co-ownership of the progress that has been made and some shared responsibility for addressing both outstanding and newly-emerging problems.