The discussion about third-level fees addresses pre-programmed pieties rather than technocratic coherence. The rainbow coalition abolished fees, arguing this would result in increased access; now a Minister for Education argues that free access for everyone, regardless of affluence, is inimical to equality.
Noel Dempsey, judging from his statements up to yesterday's announcement of a special €42 million support fund for disadvantaged students, is not seeking merely to restore a lost source of education funding, but to tap into public sentiment on what is called "equality" and has been attracting praise on this account.
The confusions which have emerged touch on the wider ideological faultlines between the coalition parties and in society generally.
Over the past decade, we have been congratulating ourselves on transforming the most punitive tax regime in Europe into the most benevolent, implicitly accepting a particular ideological view: essentially that, outside of a minor obligation to contribute to society, money belongs to whoever earns it.
This ideology smiles on self-starting and frowns on attempts to prop up the less industrious in the belief that wealth, being the primary motivator of human endeavour, multiplies under conditions of maximised incentive. This view also maintains that people have different abilities, and such differences are not merely unavoidable but essential to the mechanics of human propulsion.
This is at odds with the other main ideological strand of our time, which holds that everyone has the same potential and that failure to self-realise is a consequence of engrained societal inequality. If this structural inequality is removed, this theory elaborates, all citizens will tend towards high achievement. Without coming down on either side, one can make some general observations.
Firstly, one of these ideologies has operated for centuries (albeit with either flaws or coherent inefficiencies, depending on your view) in what we know as capitalist society. The other has not worked anywhere to anything like the degree its proponents have promised.
Secondly, the two ideologies are not necessarily wholly irreconcilable, and have occasionally been combined in a manner which increased fairness without disabling the propulsion mechanisms of society.
Thirdly, though both seek a form of fairness, the first concentrates on equality of opportunity, the other on equality of outcome.
Although money is the measure we use to tell us broadly how we are progressing in these matters, it is not the fundamental point. Someone who wins a million in a lottery does not find him or herself to have, motivationally or otherwise, "caught up" with someone who achieves the same level of enrichment from personal initiative.
As the old gender-neutral adage has it: give someone a fish and you feed him for a day; teach her how to fish and you feed her for a lifetime.
Education is, therefore, central as nothing else is. Ideally, education is preparation for life, but more prosaic experience tells us that educational attainment is a reliable predictor of wealth-attracting capability.
Free education is not, in resource terms, the same as, for example, unemployment benefit: theoretically at least, its benefits multiply exponentially in a way no other social benefits do. This also works to the good of society: in conferring income-generating capacity on individuals, education enhances overall well-being, not least in transforming elements prone to dependency and crime.
It is possible to identify a core principle with which the abolition of third-level fees was consistent: education, being too critical a resource to be denied to anyone, should be free at the point of entry, as much in the wider interest of society as of individuals.
Something being in the interest of the poor, or contrary to that of the rich, does not of itself make it an effective instrument of equality. Or vice versa. It is not enough to invoke pious/envious sentiment about making the rich pay their way: we must show how this will result in enhanced equity all round.
The alternative to fees is public funding. Politicians, nodding towards one ideology, have surrendered to demands for lower taxes and must now go back, wearing another ideological hat, to the beneficiaries of low taxes to ask them to shell out on a different basis.
But if education is a necessity of the common good, it is difficult to comprehend how a government can on the one hand argue that people be allowed to keep as much as possible of their money to begin with, while imposing a discriminatory tax on future notional benefits arising from access to the only sure route to high income-earning by their children.
In all this, we can perceive the absence of a coherent set of principles with regard to the running of society, combined with a desire to exploit or appease different sets of interests, ideologies and pieties - all at the same time.