If ever a report challenges our entitlement to trade on a green image, the latest Environmental Protection Agency evaluation of the state of Ireland's environment is it. It has implications for every citizen, every form of industry and business, and every arm of State.
It is not that the countryside has somehow suddenly become grossly polluted. Yet it charts evidence of decline in environmental quality in so many respects, albeit from an exceptionally good start-out point. But the type of deterioration it spells out is unrelenting in some areas, and cannot simply be reversed by throwing money at it.
Equally, it finds there are signs that Ireland is "drawing down its capital of good environmental conditions and following the pattern of deterioration that has characterised many of the early industrialising states".
It coincides with other EU states coming to terms with more extensive environmental problems and already preparing to meet stricter controls and perceived new threats to the environment, such as acidifying gases from agriculture and transport - demands Ireland in its current predicament will find hard to meet.
More rigorous control of Irish industry has significantly lessened the potential of that sector to cause environmental damage. Meaningful water management, for example, is coming on stream, but in exceptional circumstances - most notably, a time of economic boom extending from urban areas into many rural areas - this may not be strict enough.
The EPA's exhaustive examination shows much greater efforts will be required in key sectors. The more obvious areas are in energy production, agriculture and transport. New approaches and tighter controls are needed if we are ever to arrest the likelihood of further deterioration and to achieve the Government's often stated aim of sustainable development.
More radical measures are also required to ensure effective coastal management as coastlines show the strain of urbanisation and tourism. There is acute need to protect our most special habitats, wilderness, unique boglands and species of flora and fauna - ironically, what makes Ireland different, green and attractive to tourists.
The time has come for Irish consumers of energy and water, generators of waste, and users of landscape in both the urban and rural sense, to confront the implications of their lives.
There is no better starting point than addressing the hypocrisy this report implies we have in plenty.
We continue to spew out greenhouse gas emissions as if environmental sustainability was the mantra of some obscure green cult. Fossil fuels are burned with just the slightest pandering to alternative energy, while a wind farm proposal will almost inevitably provoke opposition.
We don't want landfills. We don't want incinerators either. We talk of recycling, and yet our lives show next to no meaningful extent of recycling, notwithstanding the State's appalling performance in fostering a climate of waste minimisation, re-use and recycling. If ever we need to convince ourselves of sentiment not equating with reality, just look at our collective tolerance of litter, if not our active participation in this dirty habit.
Refreshingly, a State agency was prepared to expose these contradictions and suggest new directions. These two factors alone are grounds for hope, not despondency. Many of the environmental trends cited have been published previously. The EPA's placing of them side by side, adding the latest research and future projections presents a new and worrying reality that has to be confronted.