Bertie Ahern blew in from the pampas this week with two messages. First, come hell or high water, the coalition is going to stay in office for its full five years. So all that speculation about a general election has got to stop.
Then, he repeated a warning, famously given by one of his predecessors whose name and record now seem to escape him. We are in danger of living beyond our means; and any resort to leap-frogging wage claims just shows how greedy we are.
The reassurance about an election is largely intended for home consumption. He hopes it will have a steadying influence on fidgety colleagues - not all of them backbenchers. It's also a belated reply to those who felt, when he ran into trouble with Ray Burke in 1997, that the Coalition wouldn't last the year.
Mary Harney and Charlie McCreevy were on hand to cheer the warning about greed. It may have sounded like a swipe at the trade unions but was really a reply to the more pointed and painful criticism of another pillar of partnership - Sean Healy of the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI) and his colleagues in the voluntary sector. Using the work of the Economic and Social Research Institute the United Nations Human Development Report and its own solid research, CORI came straight to the point:
"Government over the past four years has betrayed Ireland's poorest people. Despite having abundant resources available to ensure poverty and social exclusion was finally eliminated, Government has chosen instead to favour the better off, thus widening the rich/poor gap substantially."
There's no beating about the bush. It doesn't matter how many five-year terms a government serves or how close it gets to the unions, this is the heart of the matter. Betrayal of the poorest at the best of times. Ahern felt obliged to inform CORI and its allies that he and Harney knew what they were talking about. Together, they'd represented two of the most hard-pressed constituencies in the Dail for a total of 50 years.
But that's it: they still do.
And what's true of Dublin Central and Dublin South-West, the constituencies of Ahern and Harney, is also true of the west. No one would dare say a bad word for either place. But when you try to find someone prepared to upset an administrative, commercial or political applecart in the interests of either you'll discover that few are willing to budge.
This week the Western Development Commission set out to start a new debate about the state of the west. Not one with its head in the clouds or its hand held out for the deontas that once seemed the key to every scheme devised with an eye to western susceptibilities.
The argument for development is more vigorous, more soundly based and more challenging - to politicians, agencies and citizens - than anything that's been produced for years. Indeed, it follows CORI's cool and logical approach to the community's needs and the futility of imagining that they will be supplied by accident or at the market's whim.
The west is a special case. You can't claim that five counties - Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo and Roscommon - which had a net gain of 201 jobs in 1999 and 2000 were enjoying our much advertised prosperity.
Or that, given the demand for profit, market forces will provide the transport, energy and communications the region needs. Nor should any corporation - however wealthy or well-connected - be allowed to ignore the rights and needs of the local population.
It has been said that if Ireland were treated by the European Union as Ireland treats the west, the whole country would be up in arms. But the tight fist of the Department of Finance ensures decentralisation remains an aspiration.
It was no surprise to discover that, when it came to the exploration of natural resources, some of the best terms - from the companies' point of view - had been granted long ago by two well-known friends of corporate interests - Ray Burke and Charles Haughey.
When he was asked to comment on the present report, with its strong criticism of the west's infrastuctural deficiencies, Eamon O Cuiv, a junior minister responsible for rural development, airily replied that he could write a book about it. Living and working in the west, he told The Irish Times, he could "write a book about the lack of infrastructure here." And, while things were getting better, "the rate of improvement is . . . just not as significant as the rest of the country." It's the kind of stuff that people in the west have been listening to for years.
As for the rest of the Government - I suspect that they're so looking forward to displays of conspicuous wealth at Farmleigh House this weekend that neither the state of the west nor Eamon O Cuiv's reminiscences will make any difference to them.
Farmleigh was well chosen as the Coalition's official guesthouse - bought for £23 million, refurbished for £18 million, a mixture of styles - and intended by the Guinnesses to demonstrate and celebrate their wealth; not to share it.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie