Cardinal Desmond Connell was heckled last weekend by a few of the congregation in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral as he admitted that the church had made mistakes in the handling of clerical sex abuse cases. One of the churchgoers shouted: "It is too late".
A few days earlier, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, was booed and jeered by soccer fans at Lansdowne Road as he shook the hands of players before the kick-off of the Ireland-Switzerland European Championship qualifier.
In another very public chastising, the usually good-natured Late Late Show audience gave the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, a hostile reception when he arrived into the studio to be interviewed by Pat Kenny at the height of the spending cuts controversy. The Minister was booed before he even had a chance to sit down.
The booing of the Taoiseach at Lansdowne Road went largely unreported. By the end of the game, the focus of the "boo boys" had shifted to the Republic of Ireland coach, Mick McCarthy, as they chanted for the return of Roy Keane to the Irish squad after its 2-1 defeat.
It was one thing for Mick McCarthy to be so openly jeered by Irish soccer fans - sports managers are used to being treated like heroes when things are going well and like villains when they are on a losing run - but it is a new phenomenon in this country to have senior public figures such as a Taoiseach, a cardinal and a minister become the subject of open public hostility.
The strong message is being sent to those in authority and they should take heed. They can in future expect a frosty reception from the people they serve, especially if they have been in the eye of the storm on a controversial issue.
Booing and heckling are the new tools of protest of the Irish public. The heckling of the most senior church figure was confirmation of the rising public outrage at the once all-powerful institution of the Catholic Church for its inaction on abhorrent child sex abuse cases.
The booing of the Taoiseach and Charlie McCreevy was no doubt linked to the downturn in the economy. The public are angry. They feel Fianna Fáil hoodwinked them during the general election campaign and that the truth about the public finances was kept from them.
It must have been a major jolt for the sports-loving Bertie Ahern to be booed by soccer fans. After all, here is a man who, up to recently, boasted some of the highest popularity ratings enjoyed by a politician in Ireland. His Teflon coating is wearing off.
The emergence of hecklers and booers is evidence that as a society, we are demanding much more openness, transparency and accountability from those we would not have dared challenge in the past.
Charlie McCreevy himself acknowledged after he was heckled by students on his arrival at a function in Dublin recently that it was good to see people protesting. It showed they cared about an important issue such as college education, he declared.
The same Mr McCreevy also raised eyebrows when he praised the No voters who won the day in the first Nice referendum last year. As expected, he was criticised by the media and some of his colleagues for his unexpected comments. But certainly you could see where he was coming from.
The Minister has a point. Ireland has a far better chance of getting things right if there are people to constantly remind those in charge that they should take nothing for granted.
THE Nice referendum was won last weekend because politicians in favour of it, nearly 90 per cent of the Dáil and other interest groups, got up off their backsides and argued the case strongly and with conviction. They had got their wake-up call and made sure there would be no repeat of a defeat.
During the height of the Celtic Tiger years, there was a lot of indifference around. It seemed people were too busy making money and buying holiday homes and new cars to care too much about what was happening in wider society. For a democracy, there is nothing worse than people being uninterested in what is going on around them.
The fact that the interim report of the Flood tribunal was sold out and became a best-seller shows there is a mood out there for people in power to be held to account.
While we should acknowledge that we have come far as a country, we must also be conscious that much more remains to be done. We are still getting things badly wrong and have a lot to be concerned about.
Let's face it, the boom times are now over. We are heading into much choppier economic waters, something that is giving rise to the much angrier mood among the electorate.
Apart from the economy, there are social problems to be tackled such as under-age drinking, rising violent crime, homelessness and drug abuse. We rarely hear about those who live on the bread-line these days, the people the Celtic Tiger never reached.
I am not advocating a lack of respect for those in power for the sake of it, but properly channelled public displays of dissatisfaction, with more questioning and scepticism of those in power, can only at the end of the day be a positive thing.