A good Minister for Finance should be impervious to public and political abuse but not to reasoned argument. This Minister will go down in history as one of the great Ministers for Finance. In terms of political longevity he has some way to go to outpace Doctor Jim Ryan, Sean McEntee and Ernest Blythe. To paraphrase Kipling's famous poem, If, if ministerial colleagues are grumbling, if the Taoiseach is shaking his head, if advisers are looking worried, if members of the parliamentary party are mutinous, if there are tirades by columnists and ideological brickbats from political opponents who want to advance the argument that only the rich benefit from economic progress, if there is censure from an EU Commissioner and all the untoward developments that markets can throw up must be coped with, then indeed you have an effective Minister for Finance.