People who criticised Fianna Fail for being neo-lib were being inaccurate.  Fianna Fail actually has a strong tradition of state led enterprise and national self-sufficiently and built up much of the economic infrastructure of the country(1933-73).  It was actually partly this interventionist streak which led them to over-enthusiastically engage to "save" the banks.  A true neoliberal would have let them go bust/default/restructure.  

Although in later years (1979-2003), the neo-lib wing of Fianna Fail came to greater prominence, Bertie Ahern actually exiled McCreevy to Europe for being too enthusiastically neo-lib and the neo-lib Progressive Democrat party never got more than a single figure percentage of the vote, and has now disappeared altogether.

Fine Gael, the party now in power, on the other hand, has always been more conservative and wedded to a class system in which the professional classes are outrageously over-paid.  It is Fine Gael who are enthusiastically embracing the shock doctrine as an opportunity to dismantle the "bloated" public sector largely built up under Fianna Fail governance.

Index of Frank's Diaries