Recovery programme - Plan must be honest and equitable

SO, the day of reckoning is at hand. If all goes as promised we will, sometime in the next few hours, find out if we are governed by people with real leadership skills, with the vision and the sense of urgency required to stop the haemorrhaging of public finances; an objective central to restoring our economy and our shattered confidence.

Our squandered reputation as a safe, sane and attractive place to invest will either begin to recover today or slip further down the not-with-a-barge-pole league table. It all depends on what is proposed in the recovery programme. But something much greater, something much more important, is in play as well.

Today Taoiseach Brian Cowen will show if he values social unity more than he dreads the prospect of industrial unrest in the public sector.