So much for fears of contagion from the Greek debt crisis leading to an EU wide financial collapse. It was in the Oireachtas that resignation contagion seemed to take hold last week, bringing with it a whole new political landscape.

First George Lee resigns both his Fine Gael membership and his Dáil seat, then the thorn in the Greens' side, Déirdre de Búrca, announces her departure from both the Greens and the senate.

What on earth are they doing to each other in there? More importantly, what are they doing for us?

Lee resigned because, he says, he had "no input" into Fine Gael policymaking and would therefore feel unable to tell his grandchildren he had made a difference. The fact that he felt that his vision of the Irish nation deserved less than nine months' effort is a terrible indictment on him.

De Búrca, despite all her bluster about integrity and fears that the Greens had become "no more than an extension of the Fianna Fáil party", seems only to have got angry enough to throw in the towel (from her taoiseach-appointed senate seat) because she didn't get the political appointment in Europe that she wanted.

Lee timed his exit perfectly to walk straight back into his job in RTE. De Búrca is less fortunate and now has to look for paid employment so at least a small measure of principle was involved. Had 750 people not just lost their jobs in Halifax and the eurozone not hovered on the verge of implosion all this might be a diverting exhibition of the extent to which hubris drives people. But the collateral damage caused, especially by Lee's actions, has enormous consequences, a sign in itself of the fragility of our political system.

As Lee did the rounds of the many television interviews he basked in last Monday, the shrapnel of the grenade he had just exploded within the Fine Gael party and the wider political system began to do its damage. Some wounds will be patched up, but they will fester slowly.

Enda Kenny may have won the unanimous backing of his front bench and the support of backbenchers in the Fine Gael party, but the public unravelling of his relationship with his 'star' economist has left him badly damaged. He can't win: if George was so brilliant then why did he not look after him better; if George was such a policy-free zone, how did the party allow itself to be so badly duped by an emperor with no clothes?

If Kenny can't handle a petulant prima donna, then how is he going to get to grips with the public sector paybill?

The exit of the messiah from politics means he must make a second coming in RTE. The station is in an extremely awkward position. There was no doubt that many felt that the impartiality of its news coverage was damaged by Lee's failure to declare his hand when he left RTE for politics last June. Now, he seems to have timed his resignation perfectly so that he can walk back into the newsroom before his year's leave of absence has to be solidified into a five-year career break. He cannot go back into either politics or economics or the station will be making a mockery of its statutory obligation to impartiality, fairness and objectivity in current affairs. It is madness that, just as Fine Gael was expected to create a role to reflect Lee's greatness, RTE is now expected to do the same thing. A salary of €150,000-plus is a huge chunk out of any organisation's budget, even RTE's. It would be good to know how George Lee feels he can offer licence-payers value for money now that, to coin a phrase used by Sean O'Rourke on the News at One, he is "a busted flush".

Lee was the lightning rod through which the public disquiet about dirty politics, irresponsible banks and crony capitalism could be channeled into the heart of "the system". He could be a catalyst for reform, a means of returning politics back to the people.

Now, of course, all that hope and trust has gone. It would be easy to return to a jaded cynicism about the system. But if Fine Gael, particularly, wants to restore any trust it has to get back to the one fundamental that Lee lacked – credible policies.

George Lee distracted everybody from the real news of last week. Despite claims by Brian Lenihan that we have "turned a corner" it is quite clear to anyone with eyes, ears and no stake in the stock market or bank bonds that things are getting worse.

The people who are to lose their jobs in Halifax as it withdraws from an Irish market that it helped to distort and now considers so broken it can't see any point in staying, are only the start of the haemorrhage of jobs from the banking sector. A new wave of rumours this weekend points to up to 1,500 job losses at Allied Irish Bank.

The small businesses which rely on government to create an environment that allows them to prosper know that the positive gloss put on Nama – that it would get the banks lending again – was nothing more than spin by Brian Lenihan to win doubters to his side. The IMF had already told him it would not achieve that result.

As we prepare to throw as much as €10bn more to recapitalise the banks, stinging criticism of their professionalism comes from the governor of the central bank, Patrick Honohan, who says they have lost the skill and ability to do what they're supposed to do – fund viable businesses and industries which should be the bedrock of our success.

The George Lee experiment has failed. But alternative policy options which can show there is a future at a time when austerity is cramping ambition and hope for so many young people and so many families, were never more sorely needed.