When the challenge to John Bruton was announced on Wednesday, it sounded like good news. At last, here was something to make him mad. Not politely critical of the Government's performance, but hopping mad; sick of its ineptitude, insulted by its arrogance and indignant at the bumbling codology that passes for statements of policy.
Austin Deasy's challenge was bound to fail. Of course, it embarrassed Fine Gaelers, for whom the timing could hardly have been worse. But no serious purpose was to be served by turning on Deasy as he had turned on Bruton.
Deasy is on his way out of politics: Bruton must lead Fine Gael into the general election. And this is not only an issue for the party; as leader of the Opposition and the alternative Taoiseach, he may be called to make sense of our present chaos.
If a serious purpose was served by this week's challenge, it should be to help Bruton become a sharper, more vigorous critic with the potential to be a more effective Taoiseach than Bertie Ahern: everything now boils down to the choice between a centre-right Fianna Fail-led coalition and a coherent alternative.
But not since Dick Spring's heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s has an opposition leader managed to sound as outraged as the public undoubtedly felt; or as capable of representing the anger of the electorate in the Dail.
We can now listen, day after day, to the evidence which finally substantiates the arguments made by Spring and others but which had yet to be supported by witnesses with corroborative statements and authenticating detail.
We've seen the parade of cronies and placemen at Dublin Castle; heard the leaders of finance make their pathetic excuses to the Public Accounts Committee; and watched public cynicism fester as political responses failed to match either promises of change or expectations of retribution.
The public waits for political leadership from a government which acts as if it were in opposition and an Opposition which, with few exceptions, remonstrates half-heartedly in the Dail and gives way to radio interviewers who feel bound to act as if they were in government.
When they're asked about what may happen after the next election, Fine Gael spokesmen seem paralysed by the memory of botched negotiations in 1992; and the sheer stupidity of Labour's decision to enter coalition with Fianna Fail in the same year still haunts the party.
It's time Fine Gael and Labour got rid of their nervous tics. It's not as if they hadn't begun to produce policies which might be put to the electorate with confidence. FG has its plan for the nation, to which proposals on health are about to be added; and there's an impressive document on Oireachtas reform prepared by Bruton and Jim Mitchell.
Labour's papers on health, fiscal policy, refugees and policing are solid examples of social democratic policy, some of which have been attacked by Government spokesmen as if they followed an old-fashioned tax-and-spend line, which they've taken great care to avoid.
One of the most important demands of politics, which follows the publication of sound policies, is that party leaders and their colleagues sound as if they believe in them and their capacity to change the world.
Spokesmen shouldn't be defeated by the first smooth and semi-literate proponent of the market who argues that, really, there's no alternative; that poverty and inequality are inevitable and that, in any case, the way in which they're measured is wrong.
But the case for change is clear, and it's supported by an impressive body of evidence. The Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI) and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) have pointed out again and again where current policies are leading.
Their latest publications, Bust to Boom (ESRI) and Prosperity and Exclusion (CORI), take on the arguments about definition usually raised by those who claim that current problems are either exaggerated or largely the responsibility of the poor themselves.
Both CORI and the ESRI from their different perspectives emphasise a point that must be central to any political attempt to reform society and improve what Bruton calls the quality of life: difficulties cannot be resolved in isolation.
It's impossible to deal with poverty unless issues of taxation, health, welfare, education and the environment are confronted. The idea that poverty is an isolated phenomenon, confined to small groups or certain places, is false.
It's a consequence of central failure and can only be remedied by policies covering all areas, administrative and regional. This was the aim of the national anti-poverty strategy.
When policies are dictated by finance and no one thinks of cost and consequences to those directly affected, the results can affect generations.
It was the cost of maintaining local authority housing that led Padraig Flynn, then minister for the environment, to follow Margaret Thatcher's example and set up a scheme to sell off council houses.
The idea was that tenants could buy the houses at special rates, that they would then meet the cost of maintenance with consequent savings to the local authority, and that as home-owners they would develop a special pride in their surroundings.
That wasn't what happened. Many of the tenants turned home-owners put their houses on the market and paid their way into more prosperous areas.
The savings made by the local authorities may have helped reduce demands on the Exchequer; they were not spent on replacing the housing stock.
The number of houses being built by local authorities has fallen year after year since Flynn introduced his scheme. And the social and psychological difficulties faced by local-authority tenants have increased.
Through no fault of their own, they are among the most deprived of Irish citizens. They have been made so by policies that saved money at their expense. We know the cause. We know the consequences. This is one of the challenges that must be met now.