Three years ago it looked as if this country, North and South, was about to enjoy a period of radical change, in politics, economics and - if all went well - social affairs. The Belfast Agreement seemed set to justify the rhetoric with which it was introduced: not only would a new, multiparty executive administer Northern Ireland, relations with Britain and the Republic would be transformed.
At last there was a prospect of permanent peace in these islands.
In the Republic, the economy had already improved beyond recognition. To show how confident he was in the teeth of criticism for an extravagant tax-cutting budget, Charlie McCreevy advised the public to party, party all the way.
And laughing in the faces of his critics - the European Commission, a few Irish economists and the spokesmen on finance for Fine Gael and Labour - he peppered those well-known killjoys, liberal and left-wing pinkos, with special delight.
It is worth recalling what hopes were generated by the agreement, what fears by the McCreevy budgets, in a week in which the Northern institutions have been suspended for the second time and we've had our first lesson in what it means to be a close industrial ally of the US.
The agreement embraced the principle of consent. There was a promise of change to alter this State's constitutional claim on the North. Prisoners were to be released and reform of the police was promised.
Because the same agreement would be put to the people of the island, North and South, in referendums held on the same day, its endorsement was as close to all-Ireland approval as could be achieved.
Students of republican politics believed that these features would meet republican demands. Even more important, there was an arrangement under which republicans could become part of the executive.
It had never happened before: the Civil War had ended long before Fianna Fail entered the Dail, 10 years before the party formed a government - a point missed by many in the current debate on decommissioning.
But decommissioning - or lack of it - is at the core of the disagreement which led to yesterday's decision on suspension of the institutions. It is a decision likely to lead to greater public cynicism about politics and politicians.
Indeed, when interviewers took to the streets of Belfast during the week, those questioned were surprisingly calm - almost indifferent if not cynical. Yet the pipe-bombs continue to be thrown by loyalists and young people to have their lives and limbs ruined by the loyalists' republican counterparts exercising their control over working-class communities.
Indifference is nothing new to interviewees on the streets of Dublin, not even among Fianna Fail supporters when leadership of what is sometimes known as the nationalist family is ceded to Sinn Fein or Gerry Adams. The voices of those in the Republic who are not nationalist are seldom heard; Northern Protestants who are not unionist are counted as converts or - like Tone or Parnell - honorary Catholics when they appear on RTE.
Analysts and commentators in the Republic have yet to get to grips with the likely impact here of the serious industrial difficulties affecting the US. Few have questioned the policies pursued by Mr McCreevy and Mary Harney, with their concentration on American investment.
Only John FitzGerald of the ESRI and Des Geraghty of SIPTU have been heard to warn of the risks of failing to prepare for the worst of times while we are still enjoying the best. But preparing for the worst of times is more likely to be a preoccupation of the left than of those who criticise it.
Des O'Malley once said that if Michael D. Higgins ever got into government he'd go mad. Michael D. got into government. Neither he nor any of his colleagues in the coalition of Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left even looked like going mad.
If their government could be blamed for anything, it was for not going far enough along the social democratic road.
Given the hiatus we've now reached on both Northern and economic fronts, this a point at which social democrats may look at what might have been and what might yet be, since we still have the resources to do what many a minister of an older generation would have given his eye teeth to achieve.
That's not to go mad and spend the family fortune but to take Sean Healy's (and CORI's) advice about making this a fairer society; to ask John Lonergan, Peter McVerry or Sister Stanislaus how we should go about keeping youngsters from certain districts off the streets and out of jail.
It is to recognise that you don't attack our problems by throwing a few million at them but by designing a programme to improve our public services - health, education, transport, environment - with people in mind.