Social partnership is back on the political agenda, but whether it proves beneficial to the unions or, more importantly, the country, is highly doubtful. The unions' solo run after they walked out over the pension levy has been an unmitigated disaster. Acting like teenagers having a tantrum as a show of independence may be spectacular, but it usually leads to a massive climbdown. That's what has happened to the unions and it may be years before they regain their authority.

They will deny it, of course, but the failure of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to get overwhelming support for a national strike, now called off, revealed just how out of touch they are with the workforce and the vast numbers of newly unemployed whose interests they're supposed to represent.

The decision to call a strike, putting the interests of the insulated public sector over the needs of the unemployed and pensioners, schoolchildren, sick people and those working in firms that are struggling to retain the very jobs trade unions hold sacrosanct, was a miscalculation that even their own members could not stomach.

Back in social partnership, the unions are now open to the charge of being government lackeys, beholden to Brian Cowen's beneficence. It's impossible to see what they can gain from being party to a triumvirate involved in planning recovery after a budget that will cut social welfare and tax the lower paid.

Their bluff has been called. They will be listened to, politely, and one or two elements of ICTU's 10-point recovery plan will be dressed up as important contributions to national recovery. But this will be nothing but window dressing that will do more to chasten Fianna Fáil backbenchers who follow the Bertie Ahern school of socialism than to give the trade union membership real power. And ICTU has only itself to blame.