When we first recognised the importance of industrial development it became fashionable to refer to the country as if it were a business.
We called it Ireland Inc. The Taoiseach was boss. Brian Farrell's biography of Lemass.
Chairman or Chief suggested not only a new style of leadership but a more businesslike approach to the State's affairs.
There were complaints about the change, mostly from those who thought it alien to our traditional way of life. This, they insisted, was a truly rural country, as far from industry and high finance as it was possible to be.
The complaints were ignored. So was the argument that social progress ought to march side by side with industrial development. People needed work and industry provided it. There should be no distractions and no interference.
Politicians, by and large, obeyed this rule. Indeed they acknowledged the rights of business much as they accepted the word of the Catholic Church on what were considered to be moral issues.
And businessmen, like bishops, came to take their privileges for granted.
If either group was seldom heard making huge demands on government, it was because there was no occasion to: governments were happy to oblige. And, of course, there were other ways of getting through to them.
The bishops simply spoke to the electorate over the bowed heads of the politicians. Where more direct methods were needed, they could leave matters to lay allies who were simply rarin' to go.
As for business as usual, money talked. Companies subscribed to political parties and, on occasion, to candidates of their choice.
NATURALLY, the parties favoured by business leaders were those most likely to favour them at company, sectoral or, in certain circumstances, personal levels.
Since all governments have been led by either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael - and none has been re-elected unchanged since 1969 - it's fair to assume that the smart money is spread, unevenly of course, between FF, FG and the Progressive Democrats.
The voices complaining about the relationship between church and state began to be heard at about the same time as those complaining about the relationship between business and politics.
And the case they made was the same: that democracy was being distorted by pressures imposed in a highly undemocratic fashion on those chosen to represent the community and govern the State.
Both bishops and businessmen - not to mention political leaders - had already had fair warning of rising discontent by the end of the 1980s.
In the aftermath of two referendums in which the Catholic Church won Pyrrhic victories, the Hierarchy was advised to change the political strategy to which it had clung since the foundation of the State.
Instead of trying to have its way on all occasions and at all costs, it should seek to influence decisions - in other words, to become a pressure group like any other.
The advice went unheeded. Conservatives saw what they had imagined to be immutable decisions reversed. And the church's influence, even among its members, stands much reduced.
More than 75 per cent of them say that on serious issues they follow their consciences rather than the teaching of the church. Seventy per cent expect this to be a nominally Catholic country in 20 years.
NO DOUBT the clerical scandals of the last few years have coloured these opinions, just as the scandals at the crossroads where business and politics intersect have raised suspicions of both politicians and businessmen.
Indeed the Dunnes/Lowry debate echoed a very curious turnabout of the late 1980s and early 1990s when, after decades in which business could do no wrong, it seemed that it had become the enemy and all who engaged in it were suspect.
Larry Goodman, Dermot Desmond and Michael Smurfit filled the headlines. Many a leading article was devoted to the beef industry and the affairs of Greencore, Telecom and offshore companies. Whom Charles Haughey had met and where: "Oh, that Mr Cahill..."
All of which may well have influenced the results of the last general election. And the question the electorate may reasonably ask next time round is: what has been done to change public life in the meantime?
Once more, business and its political connections are suspect, not just in the eyes of the left but among the ranks of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Members of these parties were to be heard before Christmas referring to corporate contributions as if the money were tainted.
They usually stopped in the nick of time, to make it clear that like the tax amnesty, it was all above board - at any rate legal. And of course the funds they had in mind were those of others, not their own.
But the real measure of willingness to change is not the number of nervous speeches delivered under fire.
The test will come when Government and Opposition resume their discussion of the Electoral Bill and it becomes clear who really favours an open system of political funding - for elections or day-today administration - and who does not.
The test is in the operation of the Ethics in Public Office Act, which came into effect in March. It covers (within limits) the interests of deputies in shareholdings, land and directorships, as well as occupational income and gifts.
The debate on the Information Bill and the provision of a watertight measure to ensure that witnesses and papers may be fully examined by Dail committees will also show how serious the parties are about letting in the light and making themselves accountable.
This is, in a sense, a project of the left, adopted in turn bye FF and FG under the influence of coalition partners. It's part of the modernisation which has made some staggered advances during the past 20 years.
The Progressive Democrats are among the leaders on social issues and in the development of a rational, evenhanded policy on Northern Ireland.
But while the hellfire and brimstone preachers of financial rectitude and political probity thunder on about the need for full disclosure of Mr Lowry's affairs, they seem to believe in keeping a lid on their own.
The PDs are probably the best-funded outfit of all, and they don't want to limit contributions or to disclose where they come from.
They are also opposed to State funding of parties or elections, though they don't say no to such funding as there is.
They seem to find Ben Dunne's way of doing business somewhat distasteful. But, as I understand Mary Harney's version of their own economic policies, Dunnes Stores is a prime example of the hard-hitting, low-wage, low-tax operation that took the PDs' fancy in the Far East.
Behind Ms Harney's easy style and homely rhetoric, there is the glint of Michael McDowell's spectacles. And he, as Alan Watkins once wrote of a zealous Thatcherite, has the blue-eyed certainty of Paddington Bear.