On the eve of the Dáil's resumption, Ursula Halligan of TV3 said that Bertie Ahern, who had just appointed a clutch of junior ministers, was now more powerful than he had ever been.
So when George Lee interviewed Charlie McCreevy in the first of a major series on RTÉ, we expected to hear how Ahern's newly empowered Government planned to respond to some of the most serious economic and financial problems we'd faced since devaluation in 1992.
And, since an EU summit meeting was imminent, we might reasonably expect to be told how the coalition, with its enhanced majority, intended to resolve the most challenging political predicament we'd faced since joining the European Economic Community in 1973.
Ahern and his colleagues in Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats had flopped abysmally in the first, feeble attempt to secure endorsement of the Treaty of Nice.
With the reasons behind Ireland's No as obscure as ever and a rising gorge of frustration in the applicant states, the question "Where now on Nice?" plainly called for more clarity and courage than our leaders had at their command.
George Lee began his interview with the last item discussed in the election campaign - the parlous state of the public finances.
It seemed, he said, that the Department of Finance was "way off target" on both income tax and public spending. Not to put too fine a point on George's suspicions, it looked as if Charlie had cut loose 18 months ago and did what had to be done to win the election. We were now reaping the whirlwind.
McCreevy smiled and quibbled with definitions. A lot depended on timing, he said: an economic slowdown could have been anticipated last year; by the end of this year, there would be nothing to worry about. Our finances would not be in "significant deficit".
Lee smiled back and insisted that the public finances were, indeed, in disarray. McCreevy explained: "We spend less on government than any other state in the European Union". Lee said this was just the point made by McCreevy's critics.
(We spend less on public services than other EU states; so our services are poorer than theirs. That's what the public complains about. It stands to reason.)
Not to Charlie McCreevy. "We have an awful lot to be proud of," he says, as if he were talking about the Kildare football team. "We should celebrate our success." Other finance ministers would give an arm and a leg to be able to report Ireland's figures.
Then he starts to talk about miracles - the miracles that he has performed as Minister for Finance. It's as if the claims made by Fianna Fáil during the election campaign were not just simplistic rubbish repeated, with all those crazy polls, by Fianna Fáil's promoters in the O'Reilly newspapers and the British tabloids.
Remember how, when we hit low points during the 1980s - dreary skies and endless rain - the statues began to move? Reports from Ballinspittle and other places that stood ankle-deep in water, drew silent crowds to the guttering light of candles.
I'm not sure whether it's to George Lee's credit that he didn't laugh in McCreevy's face when he claimed to have succeeded with the State's finances "where the late Matt Talbot failed.
NO DOUBT Charlie will quote Matt Talbot at dinner among the orange groves in Seville tonight for the benefit of Chirac, Berlusconi and other prayerful luminaries of the centre right.
"Of course," he confided to George Lee, "there were some who would have been better satisfied if we'd stayed the way we were."
McCreevy has a way of suggesting that the choice for the Irish people is between returning to the state we were in 50 years ago and doing things as he believes they ought to be done. It's a choice between unemployment, emigration and rampant poverty and lashing out tax cuts to the better-off - with the lion's share going to those who already own stud farms and live off the fat of the land - in the hope that they may spread some of the benefits around.
This used to be known as Thatcherism or Reagonomics. Its proponents talked about the trickle-down effect and share-owning democracies (Eircom had yet to come). It made some people very rich indeed and left others in heart-breaking poverty.
It affected all areas of politics, economics and social affairs. It destroyed public services and its worst effects were felt where those depended most on public services were to be found, as Pat Rabbitte wearily reported the other day after an examination of the community employment schemes.
But, as McCreevy pointed out to George Lee, it was the choice of the electorate. "People voted for us to continue what we'd started" . . . keeping the poor at bay is also the choice of those who voted for other centre-right governments in the EU.
As I write, their leaders at Seville are discussing how far they should go to punish poor countries for the poverty of those born within, or allowed to pass through, their boundaries.
When Ahern, McCreevy and the rest return from Spain, the opposition generally and the left in particular should insist on their being made accountable for the decisions taken or supported in the names of the Irish people - not just for the rhetoric of neutrality.