We must hold our nerve, says the minister for finance just a few days before Alan Dukes, the public interest chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, acknowledges that the taxpayer could be on the hook for €4bn more than the previous worst estimate of a €35bn final bill.

Given the absence of optimism about anything lately, with our banks the least competitive in the world, our unemployment rate a full 5% higher than Iceland's – the country that let its banks fail – and 14 cent of every euro taken in tax going to pay off our debt, this is hardly encouraging. How much worse can it get?

This was a make or break week for Irish banking policy as the markets closed in on the growing fears about the country's ability to cope with the three-card miracle of absorbing our banks' ever-growing losses, while at the same time cutting back the €18bn we are borrowing to run public services as well as trying to raise enough taxes to pay for public services.

With bond market interest rates pushing over the unsustainable 6% mark, it became increasingly clear a decision would have to be made. The governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, has been arguing the case for a speedy resolution to the uncertainty over Anglo Irish in ever more public forums for weeks now as dithering over whether to go the route of a speedy wind-down, a lengthy work-out or a good bank-bad bank split made investors increasingly nervous. The EU commission clearly had major concerns about the uncompetitiveness of throwing more billions at a busted bank to enable it to lend.

And so we got last week's solution – a savings bank and an asset recovery bank which can borrow money from its savings partner in order that its losses can be worked out over 10-15 years. All, of course, supported by the taxpayer.

Interests such as investment bank Goldman Sachs have naturally given the decision a relatively positive verdict: nobody loses under this scheme except the taxpayer. For the moment, however, the fact that a decision has been made is something. It has eased the panic that was mounting last week. But there has to be a real doubt that, having bought themselves a bit more time with yet another plan framed in the white heat of yet another crisis, it will be implemented swiftly and tidily. Already reservations are being voiced by people who have to be listened to.

The EU Commission wants key elements clarified before it gets its approval. Everybody wants to know the final cost, something we may get next month, according to the taoiseach, and which is based on interest rates staying the same, property prices falling no further and the borrowers who can pay remaining viable.

Serious questions have also been raised by the former head of the National Treasury Management Agency, Michael Somers. Quite why the views of such a respected figure have to be expressed in purdah seems odd, but judging by what has leaked from his private address to last week's Fine Gael think-in, he is perplexed at why we now have two "namas"; one the real Nama and the other its mini-me, the Anglo Asset Recovery Bank, both raking through Anglo Irish Bank's loan book and both employing vast numbers of lawyers, accountants and other property professionals at great cost. How likely is it that they will be cutting their fees?

Whether it's a decision over the banks or driving through reforms to improve the efficiency of how government works, it has been an unfailing hallmark of the coalition that it makes grand plans and big announcements that it claims will change our systemic failures, and then nothing happens. "Policies" flounder on a morass of mismanagement, poor leadership, incompetence and special pleading by vested interests before they even begin to be implemented, or are quietly dropped.

Brian Lenihan's plea for us to "hold our nerve" in the face of such difficult times would be valid if people saw assertive policymaking having a beneficial effect on their circumstances. But his call to arms rings hollow when you're a cystic fibrosis patient caught up in the craziness that went on in the HSE and St Vincent's Hospital over the building of their new national care centre, or if you're a homeowner without a job, in negative equity, whose year's mortgage grace with the bank is about to expire. There are thousands in that position, or perilously close to it.

How long can 32,000 trainees caught up in the Fás courses fiasco hold their nerve as they wait to find out if their qualification is valid? They have to battle to compete with the other 450,000 unemployed out there, all of whom need the restructuring of Fás to happen now, not next year.

Holding your nerve is possible if you are one of the lucky ones – a GP, perhaps, who still charges €55 per patient, or a consultant who feels no guilt at asking €150 or €200 for his or her specialist advice. It is possible to hold your nerve if you're a public servant unlikely to be made redundant.

Colm McCarthy, the UCD economist who chaired the largely unimplemented Bord Snip Nua report into public sector efficiency, once famously said that "anger is not a policy".

Neither, it seems, is challenging the vested interests, the elites and the clearly systemic mismanagement that strangle each and every half-hearted attempt at reform that our ministers, with various levels of competence, attempt to put into effect.

Emma Donoghue, a brilliant Irish writer who has emigrated to Toronto, got onto the Booker Prize shortlist last week.

The Tipperary and Kilkenny hurlers provided an All Ireland Final spectacle of such skill, courage and athleticism that the entire country was mesmerised.

And even though the FAI can't sell enough tickets for the Aviva stadium, the Irish football team have won two games in a row.

Life's not all bad; a lot of it is brilliant. But if our leaders could provide us with a reasonable roadmap for recovery, it would be a whole lot better.