Three cabinet meetings in two days to discuss the budget and the global financial crisis, and more references to "defining moments" in our history from the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, than are comfortable to bear – we know it is going to be a budget bloodbath.

The figures are there for all to see, a yawning black hole of €11.5bn, and rising, that has to be plugged very quickly before the entire country swirls down the vortex.

To an entire generation, the looming misery is a mystery – the me-generation has always got what it wanted, when it wanted. So for those who have only ever known full employment and easy access to credit, the prospect of job loss, emigration and financial hardship will be all the harder to bear.

At this stage, every economist and interest group has come up with a plan for economic recovery. The minister for finance Brian Lenihan will have his own ideas, hopefully most of them a lot more imaginative than we have endured in straitened times in the past.

But on a political level, if he wants to win the co-operation of business and workers in extremely difficult times, the overwhelming priority is that he must be both bold and fair.

The extent of the problems facing us – with predictions of the economy shrinking by 1.3% this year and a further 0.7% next year, unemployment averaging (not peaking) at 9% in 2009, and a global recession damaging our export hopes – are so enormous, that it will be difficult enough to stabilise the economy, let alone turn it around by 2010. That is why it is very important that Tuesday's Budget is, above all, decisive.

It should be a core value of this budget, that no further tax reliefs, grants or easy money in the guise of help for first-time buyers are thrown at the property and banking classes whose recklessness has tipped the economy to the brink.

The last thing we need is a quasi-subprime loan scheme (the proposed equity sharing for affordable housing) that boosts developer sales of apartments at prices that are still very high.

The best favour we can do first-time buyers is to allow housing to become cheaper, so that young people in a contracting jobs market are not taking on loans from banks for overpriced assets. Any spending within the construction sector must be confined to vital infrastructure projects such as public transport, broadband and renewable energy which will encourage outside economic investment and recovery.

The national development plan is not sacrosanct but the elements that focus on business infrastructure and the development of our knowledge economy must be protected and prioritised.

Above all, the priority is to keep people in jobs. There is a real fear that cutting back too far may make things even worse and plunge us deeper into recession. That is why it is very important that the focus should be on cutting waste in the public sector. Flexibility and mobility within a public sector that gives value should be the new order, rather than an expensive redundancy scheme that could see jobs lost where they are needed and retained where they are not.

These are difficult times, but they also present an opportunity finally to face down the vested interests – not just within the banking and property sectors, but also in the health service and public service – which have been such a blight on this country.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. It is time for Brian Lenihan to step out of the shadows and deliver a budget that is as much about the moral direction of this country as it is about economic leadership.