If, as Samuel Johnson said, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then the finance minister Brian Lenihan is a very naughty boy. Lenihan's recent efforts to make people feel guilty about shopping in Northern Ireland, to suggest that they are betraying their country by indulging in cross-border expeditions to Sainsbury's, are laughable from a minister whose government stood idly by in recent years while its citizens were ripped off by Irish stores. They are also against the spirit of the EU (not that anybody cares much about that these days) and, I would have thought, a bit offensive to Northern nationalists, who may have been labouring under the misapprehension that they were full Irish citizens, members of a 32-county republic in waiting. To find out that their jobs and livelihoods are regarded by Fianna Fáil as of lesser value than the jobs and livelihoods of people in the 26 counties must hurt just a little.

For my own part, I would rather have an image of Wayne Rooney tattooed on my backside than travel to Newry to shop. Bargain hunters were the guerilla warriors of the Celtic Tiger period and now that times are hard, they seem to have switched operations to the Northern end of the country. I have never fully understood the look of orgasmic bliss that spreads across the faces of shoppers who have just saved 30 cents on a bag of prunes, or acquired a pair of jeans for 10% less than they would have somewhere else, but it takes all sorts to make an economy work. If people want to spend their weekend in six-mile tailbacks or engaged in fights to the death at bargain racks, then they are entitled to do so. The government will have to come up with better reasons than alleged lack of patriotism as to why shoppers should deny themselves such mysterious pleasures.

Lenihan has been banging this particular drum for a few weeks now (most recently on Morning Ireland on Wednesday), so I assume he believes in what he is saying and is not merely being gaffe-prone, as is the tradition in his family. It would be interesting to hear how far he wants to take his argument. If I buy Christmas presents on Amazon, am I unpatriotic? To be regarded as a properly loyal Irish man, must I holiday in Ballydehob rather than Barbados, assuming I can afford to holiday anywhere? Does Lenihan seriously suggest that as well as suffering the cuts and levies that his government has imposed on me, because of its economic carelessness during the boom, my patriotism is to be judged by my willingness to inflict even more pain upon myself by overpaying for life's essentials, whether they be milk, bread or bottles of Hennessy?

If Lenihan was a mere Fianna Fáil backbencher, we could dismiss his comments as part of the raving that emerges from that quarter from time to time. But he is finance minister, one of the three main people in government we have entrusted to steer us out of this recession. We are entitled to expect more out of him than he has so far given us. If his internal logic allows him to convince himself that cross-border shoppers are unpatriotic, then we are clearly in for a bumpy time, as that same warped logic persuades him to take up other untenable positions.

He has already bought into a few of those, and they may cripple us as a nation for many years to come. As was pointed out in this space last week – as well as in many other publications and on many radio stations – most of the nations of the western world have decided to respond to the recession by stimulating their economies. France was the latest country to get in on the act, with a €26bn stimulus package announced by President Sarkozy on Thursday.

While the rest of the world hangs together, Ireland has decided to hang separately. There is to be no stimulus package; the National Development Plan is to be regarded as stimulus enough. There will be no tax or vat rate cuts, as is the trend elsewhere. Instead we are to have our wages levied. We are flirting with a depression because our three key ministers have decided to go their own economic way.

If Lenihan, Brian Cowen or Mary Coughlan had any record of economic achievement, any history of original and successful thought on matters financial, we might have reason to be confident that Ireland's go-it-alone approach might work. But there is no such track record. We do not have cabinet leaders with economic expertise. We are depending on neophytes to extract us from some of our most difficult days.

Brian Lenihan is not an economic messiah, in other words. He's just a very naughty boy.

ddoyle@tribune.ie