Right now, the answer to our economic meltdown looks simple and clear. We'll have (read Brian Lenihan's lips) no more tax increases. We'll just have cuts in the public service.

If that makes you feel good, you're missing the point. Or several points. The first point is that if you cut public services, you cut jobs.

Right now, hardly a family in Ireland doesn't have a member who's lost their job in the most unexpected way. Architects, accountants and lawyers have all found themselves in the dole queues.

Cuts in public services could mean those queues lengthen. In theory, people working in the public service are permanent and pensionable. In theory. In reality, many services have been outsourced in recent years, with people have been taken on within the public service on terms other than permanent and pensionable.

Siptu faces the battle of its life over the next couple of months to prevent the pay cuts and job losses that would follow public service cutbacks.

That battle isn't just against Government. It's against public perception.

Ireland is a house divided, on this issue.

Every phone-in radio programme has had dozens of screaming matches between people in the private sector, who think they've taken all the pain of the recession, and people in the public sector, who disagree.

"We've suffered cuts too," they say. "Too bad," comes the answer. "You, at least, still have a job."

The enmity that has developed between the two sectors is one aspect of the bad mood that's out there, right now.

Another aspect of that problem -- and one which will cause Siptu enormous hassle -- is the growing feeling that Social Partnership was a cosy deal whereby Siptu got whatever it wanted from a Government buying industrial peace at too high a price.

As a result, the recent indications by the Siptu president that he's ready to be wooed back into Social Partnership have not gone down well.

Siptu is between a rock and several hard places.

Every time job losses happen, their membership drops in tandem with those losses.

Paradoxically, even the fact that we've had industrial peace for so long can be a disadvantage: the safe management of strikes and public protest used to be a reflex within the big trade unions, but they've had so little experience in recent years that preventing mob action when a protest gets angry is going to be a major challenge for them.

At the moment, it's all about anger. After the YES vote for Lisbon, all bets are off, and a mood of mutiny is bubbling. In that context, it will be hugely difficult for Siptu to persuade private sector workers out of their belief that the public service is bloated and filled with administrators.

A favourite complaint is that there are much more administrators in the health service than there are doctors and nurses. Now, the reality is that administration is the engine of the health service. Without administrators, records get lost, schedules fall apart and procedures don't happen. We need administrators, but Siptu won't have an easy time convincing the public of that.

The fact is that we need a good public service, and we have some of the best public servants in the world working for us. Working for all of us. We take for granted that drinkable water will come out of our taps, (in most parts of the country) that the traffic lights will work, that our children will be educated by committed teachers and that if we have to call an ambulance, it will arrive.

We need a good public service and committed public servants. Making enemies out of them is short-sighted and stupid. Every extended family contains public and private sector workers. Siptu must defend the rights of the first while not alienating the second.

That's why influencing Budget 2009 is the biggest battle of Siptu's history. For their members. And for the nation.