Water problems on every front ensure normality is a relative term when it comes to Government

The joke going around over the last few weeks was that Garth Brooks' announcement of return concerts in Croke Park after almost two decades was sure sign that the recession was over and the Troika was gone and we could go back to business as normal.

January has just finished and what's been weird about the politics of the month is divvil a word has been heard about the economy and all talk about burning bondholders has been doused.

To use one of Brendan Howlin's favourite bits of jargon – and he's finally stopped using the word quantum so it's not that – let's drill down the proposition to see why that is.

Well, the first obvious thing is that the Troika have indeed left the building. And that means the political cycle is no longer dependent on the bailout programme with its three-month quarterly reviews, and conditionalities, and targets, and secret reports that said the Government was doing what all governments do – looking for the softest option and trying to find the path of least resistance.

I must say I liked the manner in which the programme was operated. It made Government more open and transparent that we had ever witnessed it.

The Troika imposed targets (some onerous) the Government had to meet by a certain date. And on that date we learned if the Government had lived up to expectations.

But as soon as the trio of international bodies vamoosed, we went back to our old bad ways: what happens in Merrion Street stays in Merrion Street and all that.

There's an action plan for jobs with quarterly targets. But the majority of actions in it are – in reality – just padding and puff. There are no sanctions for failure, no real (in other words, independent) evaluation if it is actually making any headway in creating an additional 100,000 jobs, or just a vast PR exercise.

What was most dispiriting was the Government's four-year strategy for the economy, published in December.  There were a few solid policy strategies but there was enough woolly verbiage in there to keep the Donegal knitwear industry in stock for a year.

The second thing that has kept the economy from the headlines has been the shift in the timing of the Budget. For a generation now, it has been held in early December.

The Social Welfare Bill and the details of the Finance Bill ensured that as far as the media were concerned the comet had a very long tail. Now, the switch to October has meant that the controversies associated with the Budget have long dissipated by the time Christmas comes around. And so, as far as Budget stories go, January is a completely fallow month.

But the first month of 2014 is a kind of temporary truce before the hostilities of recession resume. Sure, things are still tough and if you want to find worrying trends they are not so hard to find.

Looking for signals in individual statistics is a mug’s game. This week, for example, the motor industry announced that the number of new car registrations for the first month of 2014 was substantially up on January 2013.

It was a good news story but you would be foolhardy to conclude from it that the motor industry has staged a complete recovery from the slump that has afflicted it since 2009. It's like saying that Fianna Fáil or Sinn Féin will be the largest party in the next election based on one opinion poll.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.