Last week's Irish Times/MRBI poll showed that the tide of public opinion was no longer running in favour of the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrats Coalition.
This week's events - mishandling of the Ellis affair, callous treatment of refugees and a bitter reminder of the way in which justice is doled out - are bound to have deepened suspicion and spread the blame.
For, while the Ellis affair is a scandal of Fianna Fail's making which staggered from denial to evasion and expediency, responsibility for the other events is not so easily confined.
Parties of all shades which have had a hand in government during the 1990s must share the blame for conditions now being endured by immigrants and prisoners who find themselves at the mercy of our State agencies and institutions.
But the challenges are not directed at politicians alone. But they have the means, the obligation and - now as never - the resources to meet them. And, in the democratic order, politicians come first.
This makes it all the more important that, in a society which boasts its ability to offer citizens the freedom to choose, when they turn to politicians the citizens should recognise a difference between parties. On difficult issues, like those of the week, the public is apt to find distinctions blurred.
Deliberately so, perhaps, when the only votes - or favourable publicity - to be had are from the lock-'em-up or lock-'em-out brigade.
Jim Higgins of Fine Gael and Brendan Howlin of Labour appeared (briefly) above the parapet when the Eastern Health Board shut down its application centre for asylum-seekers in Dublin on Monday.
A few of their colleagues also complained of the closure and commented (mildly) on the suicide in Mountjoy of a 25-year-old Limerick man who'd been given a three-month jail sentence for the larceny of a jacket worth £40.
But the debates on immigration and the administration of justice have been conducted largely outside the political arena by groups or critics directly concerned with the issues: Comhlamh, CORI and the Penal Reform Trust.
The question of asylum will, as Prof Fred Halliday has noted, become the most sensitive and controversial issue of world politics in the next century.
This becomes clearer with every day that passes - to everyone but John O'Donoghue. He seems to think that, on sensitive and controversial issues of world politics, Ireland should take its stand with the Evening Herald and the late-night furies on 98 FM and FM 104.
Much of the frustration felt by those who do not belong to the lock-'em-up or lock-'em-out brigade arises from the absence of a clear political alternative to O'Donoghue's populist attitudes.
Indeed, if the next general election is not to show another drop in turnout, the opposition parties had better step up their efforts to convince people that an alternative exists.
Last week I referred to John Bruton's appeal for a new patriotism with his "Plan for the Nation" - Fine Gael's vision of Ireland in 2010 - and Ruairi Quinn's call for a return to "the true republican and egalitarian ideals on which the State was founded".
Their authors probably hoped that these documents would capture public attention before the avalanche of statistics bound to accompany the National Plan and Charlie McCreevy's Budget.
In fact, they could hardly be farther removed from McCreevy, either in style or content. There are no columns of figures, no hardchaw, take-it-or-leave-it comments, no blunt appeal to accountancy and marketing.
Refreshingly, both leaders set their sights on the citizens and appeared to say that the business of wealth creation could be taken as read. Not taken for granted but acknowledged as common ground between the major parties.
Bruton wrote: "Our focus in politics should be on the quality of life - the quality of the life people are living in Ireland today."
He favoured partnership, in domestic as in social and economic affairs; noted Ireland's poor rating in the UN's quality-of-life index; and called attention to some problems which many had forgotten.
One such problem is the persistence of emigration by some who have no great need to go but also by "a distinct stream of unskilled and poorly qualified Irish people, going to Britain, and to a lesser extent to the US".
THROUGHOUT, there's a constant emphasis on children - they're discussed, he says, as if they were an inconvenience, to be parked while the captains of industry increase productivity - and on childcare.
Quinn, too, is preparing for a campaign in which the central issue is not how to create wealth but how best to use it for the benefit of the society at large.
He recognises the false dichotomy between civil and political rights and the social and economic rights to housing, health, nutrition and an adequate standard of living.
In short, having the right to vote or stand for election is not enough if citizens do not have the social and economic rights listed above which, he believes, should be set in the Constitution.
If the Opposition parties have yet to make a mark on the issues raised by Bruton and Quinn, there is one feature which already distinguishes their parties from Fianna Fail.
In The Irish Times/MRBI survey which, for the first time since 1997, produced a Government satisfaction rating (just) below par, those who claimed to be dissatisfied were asked to say why.
It was an open-ended question which, instead of suggesting a set of options, gave respondents an opportunity to offer whatever reason they chose.
And the answers given by 25 per cent pointed to low standards: they listed scandals, tribunals, dishonesty, gangsters, crooks and Haughey as the reasons for their scepticism.
To judge the importance attached to these reasons, all that's necessary is to give some of the others: unfair taxes, 4 per cent; healthcare, 3 per cent; rich getting richer, pay rises for politicians, nurses' strike, broken promises, 2 per cent each.
Which brings us neatly back to the Ellis affair and what constitutes moral responsibility.