On socio-economic issues, what this Government does (as opposed to what it says) is unmistakeably left of centre, writes Dan O'Brien.
How do you judge where a government really stands on the left-right spectrum? Among the best ways is to look at its spending habits. Because the left in government is usually impatient to right social wrongs, it is often accused by the right of irresponsibly throwing taxpayers' money at problems.
For all its talk, this Government's fiscal record fits perfectly the stereotype of socialist profligacy.
Never in the history of the State (or, indeed, any European country) has so much been injected into public services in so short a period for so little gain.
The upshot: in just 24 months the public finances deteriorated more rapidly than in any other EU country and a mountainous budget surplus was turned to deficit.
So with no sign of right-wingery on spending, it is worth examining the other side of the ledger - how and where tax revenue is raised - for another perspective. If changes in inequality are used as a proxy for assessing political orientation (admittedly, a crude measure), the Government's record shows that it tilts to the right, but only ever so slightly.
Brian Nolan of the scrupulously independent ESRI has dug deep to find out who benefited most during the economy's wonder years. His conclusion is, surprisingly, that inequality did not "uniformly or substantially increase during the boom".
His analysis also shows that Government budgetary policy contributed to the (small) widening of the gap in 1998-2000, but the budgets in 2001-2002 had the opposite effect. In another study, the think-tank's big brains found that the percentage in persistent poverty, the most comprehensive measure of misery, actually fell from 11 per cent of the population in 1997 to six per cent in 2000.
So the Coalition's record shows that it has been slightly right of centre on tax and well to the left on spending. But what about another point of departure for left and right-market intervention?
Rightists advocate leaving well enough alone because they think that interfering in markets rarely makes things better. Besides, they say, interventionism invites unintended, and usually unwanted, consequence.
Leftists have fewer qualms. They believe that markets sometimes fail and even when they don't, their outcomes are all too often iniquitous. They like to use the hand of the state to get the outcomes they want.
And so, too, does this Government. Start with the jobs market. The Coalition introduced a minimum wage - a demand of the left which is opposed by economic liberals because they believe that putting a false bottom into the labour market hinders, not helps, the marginalised get into work.
What's more, the Coalition has been an unstinting supporter of quintessentially continental social partnership - a non-market pay-setting mechanism, and the sort of un-American activity that the Cabinet's heaviest hitters might usually be thought to frown upon.
In another important market - property - the Government has been busier still. It paid economic consultant Peter Bacon handsomely to churn out three separate sets of sometimes contradictory measures designed to halt dizzying price increases, exactly the sort of "meddling" that is anathema to real free-marketeers.
But that was not the end of interventionism in the property market. In a move to increase the supply of housing for the needy, the Government legislated to oblige property developers (among the fattest of cats, incidentally) to hand over 20 per cent of their land. Such a measure would be considered by real right-wingers to be an arbitrary act of theft by the State and one that even openly socialist parties on the continent have shied away from.
And this is not the only time the capitalist classes have got it in the neck. When Charlie McCreevy's fiscal ineptitude finally starting catching up with him, he looked for soft targets to shake down. To the money men's consternation, he plumped for the banks, slapping a €300 million levy on them.
Now contrast the lot of landed tycoons and the banks to the Government's most un-Thatcherite readiness to give trade unions what they want. Public-sector unions extracted an astonishingly generous deal from the State in the benchmarking agreement on evidence that was so flimsy it was never published.
When Eircom workers said no to privatisation they were paid off with a whopping 15 per cent of the company's shares, an arrangement without precedent in the EU and one that even rebranded communist parties in eastern Europe today would not countenance.
As for privatisation more generally, this Government has shown less zeal for disposing of State assets than recent continental governments in France and Italy led, respectively, by socialists and leftists. Take Aer Rianta. For the real right, there is no logic in having civil servants run airports, and even less when they thwart the terminal-building ambitions and thrusting private enterprise of the likes of Michael O'Leary.
Much more serious are grave charges that Government policy on immigration has hints of the nasty extreme right. Thankfully, this is not the case. There is no question that the country's commitments under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees have ever been breached. Nor have any manifestly unjust provisions been introduced. That Ireland's approach remains fairer than most rich countries is evidenced by the asylum application figures: last year the Republic received the third highest per capita number in the EU.
As regards straightforward economic immigration, Ireland is even more welcoming. Last year 40,000 work visas to non-EU nationals were issued, a number far ahead in proportional terms of even the US, the most open of developed countries. But all of this should not surprise. A very small number of shameful exceptions apart, our political class (including both Government and Opposition) has been almost unique in Europe in not seeking electoral advantage by pandering to anti-immigrant prejudice or scapegoating foreigners for society's ills.
So this Government shows no signs of far-right intolerance and, on socio-economic issues, what it does (as opposed to its talk) is left of centre.
But does it really matter how we label governments? In truth, not much.
The moderate left and right both want what's best for society and share the same democratic values - justice, liberty, solidarity and the like. What has traditionally separated them is that they prioritise these values differently.
But even this difference, in practice if not in principle, is narrowing. "What matters is what works," said Tony Blair to his shocked party, which was still wedded to doctrinaire notions.
But in the Republic such pragmatism has always been a virtue; those words could have been spoken by any Taoiseach since the State's founding. It's hard not to sense that our pragmatic political way, once considered quirky for its absence of ideology, is the way of the future.
Dan O'Brien is Senior Europe Editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit