The Minister for Finance revives an old claim, that this is a classless society, to prop up a new argument - that ours are the problems of prosperity. Given his record of incoherence, it's not surprising to find that he's wrong on both counts. This is, and always has been, a class-ridden society.
And it's now, more than ever, riven with scandalous divisions in which the interests of the rich and powerful are protected at every hand's turn and in every way against the interests of the community.
Our political and financial systems have failed us again and again, whether through gross incompetence or significant corruption has yet to be shown. What has come to light so far suggests a combination of the two.
In the past fortnight we've had two cases of huge political, social and financial consequence both to those who pay taxes and to those who benefit from the services the taxes provide.
The confirmation of an EU fine of £70 million was the inevitable result of fraud by the most powerful companies in the State's most profitable industry and the Department of Agriculture's failure to detect it. The full cost of the scandal in the beef industry has yet to be discovered. It may reach £250 million. And that doesn't include the bill for the Hamilton tribunal.
AIB is one of the richest companies in the State. Its board has included the great and the good, Peter Sutherland and Miriam Hederman O'Brien, as well as the rich and powerful. They've taken it upon themselves to lecture the rest of us about responsibility.
In its case, confirmed by Magill on Thursday, taxes amounting to £80 million on bogus, non-resident accounts are said to have been written off by the Revenue Commissioners. Without fuss, recrimination or publicity.
This wasn't the first or only example of the banks, the regulators and the Revenue Commissioners letting us down.
By all - as yet unconfirmed - accounts, AIB was not alone among financial institutions in helping clients to avoid paying the taxes they owed. Some see this as an excuse of sorts, as if, because "they're all in it" the offence is less serious than it seemed. I wonder if those who think so have ever heard judges in the lower courts on shoplifting?
Of course not: lower courts, lower orders, another country. Other arguments are trotted out by economists masquerading as independents, though most of them are nothing of the sort. One is that neither the EU fine nor the AIB write-off is big enough to make any difference to the Exchequer. Another is that the sums are so big most people don't understand them and soon lose interest.
If the first were true, why does the mere mention of welfare fraud (£14 million last year) send the same po-faced fogies and their cronies in the media into whingeing hysterics?
As to the public's loss of interest, I wouldn't bet on it. Remember the EU report which showed that ours was the lowest tax and social security take in the Community? Remember the Comptroller and Auditor General's report which showed that by far the greatest share of the tax that was paid came from the PAYE sector?
We have the lowest tax and social security take in the EU because the shysters at the top don't pay their share. Because of this and the protection afforded by their political agents - to whom the banks and the beef industry make lavish contributions - our public services are among the poorest and meanest in the EU.?
On Wednesday an attempt to debate the beef industry's scandals was refused by Bertie Ahern in the Dail and treated with ignorant contempt by some in the media. Then Magill appeared and Mr Ahern and his colleagues were to be heard mumbling that somehow, some day, something would be done. Liabilities "of a present nature or a past nature" would be met, the Taoiseach said.
Soothing stuff for someone who didn't know his Ansbacher from a brown paper bag, who'd never heard of NIB or Mary Harney's dirty dozen and who thought housing rackets was a game you played on your way to the Cayman Islands. Our visitor would need to have forgotten that Mr Ahern was the man who spent time up a tree - indeed, up every tree in north Dublin - during the Ray Burke affair. And came away empty-handed.
He would also have to take Ms Harney's word for it that a new regulatory body for the financial institutions being devised by herself and the Minister for Finance would be livelier than the present regulators. Given the promises made after every scandal since the late 1980s, the constant, wearing resistance to change on all fronts, the excuses, the lies, the refusal to drag the Constitution into the 1990s, I doubt it.
The chairman of the Revenue Commissioners, Dermot Quigley, dawdled through interviews this week as if he hadn't sidled over the same ground last week or six months ago.
Mr Quigley is a master of the mo indireach, the gnomic aside. He talked of hints, and in hints. The Revenue Commissioners, he said, once went into a financial institution without being invited.
Beat that for courage.
As for the Central Bank, someone noticed the other day that its governor, Maurice O'Connell, had slipped away from the meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington. Was he missed? When Dorothy Parker was told that Calvin Coolidge had passed away, she asked: "How do they know?"
With the urgency shown by the Government and the regulators this week, I'm afraid we're in for the problems-of-prosperity for a long time.
I think the people who sleep in doorways, hostels or freezing squats should be told. So should the teachers who are striking, not for higher wages, but for better services in the worst-off schools. And the doctors who are worried about patients at risk for want of hospital beds.
But don't let any of them imagine that serious change is on the way.
WHEN Barry Desmond, Tomas MacGiolla and others asked about shenanigans in the beef industry 10 years ago, Charles Haughey accused them of national sabotage.
When journalists on RT╔'s Farm Diary dared report questionable practices by the Goodman group they were penalised; and the station broadcast an apology which, even by the standards of Irish journalism, crawled. It apologised for statements that had not been made as well as for those which couldn't be proved at the time.
Time and again in the years that followed politicians and commentators were told they must wait for answers to the questions asked in the Dβil and suggested on RT╔. The public was advised by po-faced ministers to wait for Mr Justice Hamilton's tribunal to reach and publish its conclusions. It was sub judice, in a manner of speaking. The public waited.
The report is out. The appeal has been heard. It's old hat. The shysters are back where they were. And so are we.