Speaking in his office overlooking Parnell Square, one of the country's senior statesmen puts Ireland's entry into the top rank of the developed world like this: "Ireland has made it to the bottom of the Premiership, the way living standards are measured, etc. . .the question for the future is, can we make it to the Champions League and avoid relegation?"

How to avoid relegation?

Cassells may not fall into the category of commentators whose suicide would make the world seem more understandable to the Taoiseach, for the crime of opining about possible doom and gloom futureshocks, but pointing out that Ireland is under constant threat is refreshingly candid.

But if Ireland is entering a new phase, and things get harder from here with India and China threatening to overwhelm us, could partF nership, the system Cassells suggested in a 1985 report when general secretary of ICTU, be holding us back?

"Partnership is probably cursed by its association with structures, " Cassells said.

"I do still believe national partnership arrangements are crucial in developing a shared understanding around the issues and where we want to go and adopting a problem solving approach rather than an adversarial negotiations approach.

"But people then say, 'oh, you have to have a committee.'

Whereas my sense is that the whole thing is a process.

Whatever people want to call it . . . good HR, empowerment, whatever."

Surprisingly, Cassells seems to suggest that the partnership ideal may look more like the inside of Google or Nokia than the 'Towards 2016' talks in Dublin Castle.

He goes one further, mentioning that Google's European vice-president John Herlihy sits with him on a group looking at some of the big strategic issues facing the country.

"People always say to me, are you for or against partnership . . . my answer is yes.

I'm for it in the way I've described it, where people are empowered, developed and treated fairly. I'm against it when people are exploiting people, not paying them fairly, where management is hierarchical and old-style, where we're here to give the orders and you're here to do a job. If a company organises itself along traditional lines, it shouldn't be surprised when the staff and unions equally respond along traditional lines.

"I don't see [partnership] as a big, overarching blanket. It's a process of where the future is built around involving people.

Cassells argues that the partnership process may actually itself be a source of competitive advantage in Ireland, by increasing the "capacity for change" in the public and private sectors.

The capacity for change Cassells is counting on is going to be sorely tested in the coming years. Some 80% of the technologies we use in the workplace today won't be around in the future workplace in 2015, but six out of 10 of the people who will be in that workplace are already in the workforce, according to research commissioned by the National Centre for Partnership and Performance that he chairs.

That pace of change, driven by a need to radically increase productivity in order to stay competitive, will test the abilities of employees and organisations to adapt like never before.

There are also further structural changes coming in the Irish economy, particularly among indigenous enterprises and in the public sector, that will push the limits. Not to mention future disputes over infrastructure that may make Rossport and the M3 motorway disputes look tame.

But Cassells believes his experience as a mediator between Shell and protestors resisting the route of the Corrib gas pipeline in Rossport, Co Mayo, suggests that here, too, his partnership philosophy has a role to play.

The massive wave of major infrastructure projects being funded by the National Development Plan will run into massive cost overruns if local communities can't be brought onside, he warns.

"The issue that is rarely looked at is the management in terms of change: how does community gain, managing input into planning process."

The issues that make the Corrib dispute an urgent problem for Ireland . . . our geographic location at the end of a long energy pipeline, and thus have a greater need than ever for security of supply . . .

also apply to what may be wrenching changes for electricity generation and transmission in Ireland.

Here too, Cassells has already played a behind-the-scenes role, he reveals. Before the last government commissioned Deloitte to write a report about the future of the ESB, Cassells was chairing talks between management, unions and government about reforms that would be required.

He says that the confrontation with unions might not be as bad as feared, because there seemed to be some agreement about the nature of the problem.

"It's not that ESB has a high percentage of the market, it's thatf prices are determined by the ESB by and large.

"It's probably in the worst place it could be . . . because it is determining price in that particular way. Obviously the regulator is seeking to control that.

"The best thing that could happen to the ESB is to sell off some of its capacity, and I don't mean the clapped out ones.

"The best thing to do is to let two or three big players into the market . . . be they private firms or building up other semi-state companies . . . rather than the ESB to determine that but to open it up."

But Cassells thinks that the unions may be more agreeable on this point than many may think. Reflecting on the talks he chaired, he said, "there was lot of discussion about this at the time. The unions . . . well the ones who were thinking about it . . .weren't a million miles away on this point."

Looking back, one of the biggest frustrations that Cassells has is that the partnership model in Ireland hasn't extended to the reward system.

Employees being asked to cope with a frantic pace of change will naturally want to be compensated for often radical changes in technology and work practice. Many employers won't be able to increase pay, however, until they know whether the hoped-for productivity gains will actually materialise.

Cassells has been pushing what is, to him, an obvious solution . . . profit-sharing schemes that reward performance and shared risk between employees and management.

"I've never understood what the resistance is from unions and management, " he said.

"Take the ingredients of what I call partnership: common purpose, change, communications, lifelong learning, work/life balance, diversity, range of employee financial involvement, profit-sharing.

"The future . . . that's what it is. As I said, partnership has been cursed with notions about structure. I don't mind what people call it."