I had a thought which may seem a bit daft but bear with me. If the Irish state were a business it would be insolvent now and would probably have been placed in receivership or administration.

The Irish political system and structures appear to have been completely discredited, not least in the eyes of the people of Ireland. It seems the sensible thing would be to let the EU sort out the mess without the IMF by having the EU take direct control of the running of the country in return for helping restructure the finances of the state.

This would involve a number of measures: bringing Irish corporation tax into line with other European countries (and ensuring those taxes were collected and enough people were employed to do the job), stopping the tax breaks that rich foreign celebrities get simply by buying property in Ireland, and nationalising the Irish banks and bringing them under the direct control of the European Central Bank. That's just for starters.

A lot of people would say this would be 'undemocratic' and a 'surrender of Irish sovereignty' but at the moment there is no Irish sovereignty. This sort of scheme would need to have a fixed time limit - maybe 5 or 6 years. Any longer and you remove the urgency of restructuring the State.

This could also give Irish voters a chance to re-align themselves politically - if you take power away from Fianna Fail and Fine Gael they'll have to earn it back when the time comes (as would the Irish Labour Party, the Greens and Sinn Fein). The alternative would be for Irish sovereignty to continue to ebb away uncontrollably to the IMF, the ECB and the City of London.

It would obviously be a big step and everyone would probably hate it - mind you, at least that would create some kind of concensus and create the space for a real debate on what sort of society Ireland wants to be in the future. Much of the positive development in Ireland during the 90s was funded by Europe anyway as part of the European social democratic tradition of Keynesian social investment. It was only when Irish politicians and capitalists decided they had an opportunity to behave like US-style robber barons that it all started to go to hell in a handbasket.

It's clear that Westminster-style 'Democracy' has failed in Ireland. The state and economy needs fixing and there doesn't seem to be any political party or faction in Ireland with any idea how to handle the present mess. What's been good in Irish development since the 80s has come from the European social democratic tradition. What's bad has come from the American tradition of unfettered capitalism (as in the UK). Ireland needs to take a good, hard, unsentimental look at what has worked and what hasn't and choose accordingly - while it still has a choice.