Public service, like trust in the leaders of public life, is no longer taken for granted. Trust has evaporated; and the notion of service is under attack. A sense of unease has spread among those who provide the services; and, for the public whose interests they're meant to serve, old certainties become daily less secure.
The Army, the ESB, Aer Lingus, Aer Rianta, Coillte, RTE and CIE - all have been in the news of late, either because of disagreements with the Government or suspicion of impending privatisation.
It's not easy to see what's happening or why. In some cases neither the Government nor the relevant minister has come up with a statement of policy. But the argument for privatisation is drummed out - most vigorously by those who have an ideological or financial interest in it. The State, they say, has no business providing electricity, growing trees, running transport services.
Private enterprise - Ireland Inc - could do it all so much better. And the interests of the public would be protected by regulators. But, as the tribunals and other inquiries have shown, self-regulation doesn't work. And our experience of independent regulators, up to and including the Central Bank, isn't encouraging.
As for Ireland Inc, some of its stoutest pillars have been exposed as, at least, inefficient and, at worst, more interested in stashing the profits out of sight of the taxman than in the common good.
Privatisation is arguable case by case. But whose advice do you listen to when the advisers and senior managers are apt to make small fortunes from the change of ownership, and share options for employees ensure unions don't object too loudly?
The thrust of what appears to be Government policy runs counter to Fianna Fail's criticism of other governments and parties over many years.
Yet the evidence of ministerial determination is as widespread as the reports of unease; together they suggest a change of direction that, in time, may be compared to the move to industrialisation in the 1960s.
The conflict which has attracted most attention is in the Army.
The Defence Forces might reasonably have expected that enhanced roles - in Partnership for Peace and the European Union - would be duly recognised by the Government. Far from it, they've been given brusque and peremptory treatment by Michael Smith. It's as if the Army were an outlying branch of some aggressive business whose headquarters are bent on change.
RTE, too, is an exception among the institutions and State or semi-state companies which the Government may feel tempted to sell off or cut down to size.
Prosperity is good for us: the more people who share in it the better. And, for many, that means being able to avail of the essential services which prosperity ensures we can afford.
But some would argue that public service broadcasting is a luxury we could do without or which might best be provided by private enterprise. I don't agree. Public service broadcasting is essential to the life of a democracy, in line of importance next to a free press.
Ideally, the service should be wholly funded by the State, as the BBC is, but kept at arm's length from the government of the day. Even when its revenue comes partly from the State and partly from advertising, the station's independence must be guarded.
One of our most experienced broadcasters, Muiris Mac Conghail, said on Raidio na Gaeltachta's Cois Life the other day that the national broadcasting service was the most important cultural institution in the State.
He's right. It's also the most democratic, accessible and provocative. And our exasperation at what we see as its failures is often a measure of the extent to which we feel it's ours. It's hardly necessary, in the season of Sean O Mordha's monumental Seven Ages and John McGahern's Amongst Women, to record our pride in its achievements.
(I have to acknowledge here that two members of my family work for RTE, though not as broadcasters; and that my first writing job with this newspaper was as radio critic.)
In another season, people of my generation enjoyed the great days of the Radio Eireann Repertory Company (the Rep); the collections of Sean O Riada, Seamus Ennis, Ciaran MacMathuna and Sean Mac Reamoinn; the poetry of Austin Clarke, talks and stories of James Plunkett.
We hung about parked cars on windy Sundays to catch the excitement of Micheal O hEithir; O'Hehir; one word in 10 was enough to claim a share of that famous night when Cavan beat Kerry in the Polo Grounds, New York.
It's a long way from there to the sudden, mysterious decision by Sile de Valera that RTE is to have no part in Digico, the company that will operate a new system capable of delivering up to 30 TV channels to every house in the State. RTE was to have had a holding of up to 40 per cent in Digico - or so it was assumed since the Broadcasting Bill was published in May of last year. Now, it will have none.
And what will this mean? In the Sunday Independent, Colum Kenny, a senior lecturer in communications at Dublin City University, explained: "Whoever controls Digico, as envisaged, will effectively decide the package of TV services on it. If Digico passes completely into multinational hands, as Cablelink has, the Irish public could lose control of nearly all of its airways."
Mac Conghail thought it was enough to provoke immediate action by the RTE Authority, the opposition parties and anyone with the interests of public service broadcasting at heart.
Enda Kenny of Fine Gael asked why a select committee of the Oireachtas had spent months on the Broadcasting Bill under a false impression.
And Ruairi Quinn put it down to the McCreevy way of doing ministerial business which is, it seems, catching. McCreevy boasted to the Racing Post last week that he'd done his bit to promote gambling on horses but thought the next step was to put racing's finances on a permanent footing.
Otherwise, "racing will be at the whim of the government of the day and, when the pressure comes for expenditure on things like health and education, racing will go down the political priority list."
This led Quinn to ask: "Is horse racing really more important than health or education?"
But the McCreevy way doesn't stop at dismissive references to public services. He also explained that he doesn't go in for consultations before making decisions.
"Some say that this is my strength, others say it is my weakness." And others just think of jockeys and brass necks.
dwalsh@irish-times.ie