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"The worst is over," declared Brian Lenihan, Ireland's finance minister, last Wednesday, after announcing brutal public spending cuts to tackle the country's fiscal crisis, which included slashing four billion euros from the budget and thousands more euros from ministers' salaries.

We hadn't seen anything like it since 1987, when Lenihan's father, also called Brian, was a senior cabinet member. Back then, we also had long dole queues, people whispering the letters "I", "M" and "F" in off-the-record briefings and a Fianna Fail government forced to abandon its populist instincts to solve fiscal problems that many accused it of creating.