It's a funny old world when the contribution of a mild-mannered academic thrust into perhaps the most important job for our times turns out to be the closest thing we've got to a beacon of hope and leadership for the coming year.

The new governor of the Central Bank, Professor Patrick Honohan's thoughts about banking, blame and the recovery have been a curiously moral affair. They've also been something of a revelation, hitting a national chord not because what he has said has been so brave or so radical or so subversive, but because they've been so honest. In the past couple of weeks governor Honohan has been making headlines everywhere, telling it straight and being utterly unflinching about the failure of regulation and the unhealthy links between banking, business and politics in the past. "I may not be a banking type. I may not play golf as well as the bankers, but I know what bankers do." No wonder the share price of the two main banks dropped in response last week.

Here at last is somebody in a position of considerable power telling it as it is - no spin, no varnish, no agenda. It seems a very long time since somebody "up there" has done that with such clarity and vision. A very long time indeed.

It's a funny old world too, when the battle for Christmas number one so perfectly sums up the split over how we go about we approach 2010. Should we Rage Against the Machine and bang on loudly about our alien-nation like the angriest of punk metal bands, or should we look to our inner resources and prepare sweet-voicedly for 'The Climb' to a recovery?

Will it be a year of marches, disruption of elective surgeries and longer waiting lists in hospitals, school protests, less time in class and added stress for exam students? Or will there be a change of mindset that achieves the transformation that everyone in this country yearns for? A better more transparent way of doing business that rewrites the rulebook for both public and private sectors, a rulebook in which the words ethics, honesty, hard work, co-operation for the common good and principle feature large?

Brian Cowen's admission that this was the worst year of his political life was clearly no exaggeration. One can feel some pity for him so great has the storm of woes over the past year been – not just economic but also metereological and ecclesiastical. Between the nation almost falling off a financial cliff, the worst floods in our history and sickening revelations of clerical abuse which the state played a part in facilitating, 2009 was hardly a cake walk and he has admitted himself that communicating a way out has not been his strength.

But just as his government begins to talk of turning corners, programmes such as last week's excellent Prime Time on the banking industry shoot us right back into the past. Its revelations of the rule-free access to loans of senior Fianna Fáil figures, including Bertie Ahern's former partner Celia Larkin and of EU commissioner and former finance minister Charlie McCreevy, once again damaged the authority of the government. The relationship between Fianna Fáil figures and Irish Nationwide is troubling as this is the most dysfunctional building society this country has ever seen. Some 80% of its loan book – or €8bn will go to Nama. The building society says it will investigate any breaches of its rules and the Financial Regulator pledges an inquiry. But this is to miss the point: Fianna Fáil itself needs to come clean about the extent of cronyism - and indebtedness - between its members and the two rotten financial institutions, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, because the easy links exposed on Prime Time must have been a strong dynamic in the "group-think" that led this country down the economic drain.

The drip-drip of revelations undermines the current strategy even among those who believe the targets of the cutbacks are correct and ferments anger and unrest among those who don't.

Next year may not be as tough in terms of economic contraction: it seems the economy will "only" contract by a further 1.5% and that unemployment will "only" rise by 75,000. "Only" about 18,000 people are on the brink of losing their homes.

But 2010 is the year that Nama kicks in and the year that the banks will need many more billions from the taxpayer when the full extent of their incompetent decision-making is revealed. Nama is a long term project and it needs public support if every decision is not to be picked at like a bleeding scab that drains attention from the wider rebuilding we need to do. This is why a public inquiry on the lines that Patrick Honohan sets out could be so helpful.

We need the inquiry, as Professor Honohan says, not as a 'who did what' blame game - hopefully the gardaí will come to some conclusions there soon - but as a wider investigation into the political, economic, sociological and psychological forces that came into play within the hub of power and which played out in society generally. We need it as a kind of truth and reconciliation forum that can kickstart a whole new debate about our future, free from recriminations about the past.

Reform at every level is needed if we are to begin a new, wiser, more mature phase in this country's history in which economic growth is sustainable, decision makers are accountable and their actions transparent and those in positions of power are also freer to speak with the sort of independent-mindedness that the new Central Bank governor is demonstrating.

"Trust less and verify more" is Professor Honohan's mantra, a maxim this country could do well to take on collectively as its first and only new year resolution.