Heroes: Artist Sean Corcoran pays tribute to our healthcare workers by tracing their very own superhero icon in the sand at Kilmurrin Cove on Waterford’s Copper Coast. Photo: Sean Corcoran at the art hand

We have learned a lot from our fight against Covid-19 and those learnings are not going to go away. Our world is changing. The reference frame of politics is being restructured in front of our eyes.

Hard chestnuts have been cracked open recently.

Last week, the mystery shortage of hospital beds and step down beds was resolved when the Government found a formula to magic a few thousand beds for patients out there in Citywest and around the country. Who knew?

It would be a foolishly brave politician indeed who would plan to hide those beds again.

Rent freezes were introduced without a whimper. Whatever happened to all those arguments about constitutionality and more which prevented this previously?

In our hour of need we did not turn to the leaders of commerce or to our offshore billionaires. No! Last week, the country stood together to applaud our frontline workers including nurses, doctors, gardaí and others.

And we acknowledged the input of educationalists, the important role of retail staff, the crucial role of crèches and the list goes on and on.

We recognised that those in society, often described as mere "cogs in the wheel", are actually the foundation blocks in our hierarchy of need.

We learned too to trust our experts and that our professionals are world class. They minded us. Great stuff guys, thanks for all that. But after we applaud them off the stage, what happens next?

During the crisis we have caught a glimpse of the future and it can work. We have seen what is possible. With political will problems can be resolved and things made better.

Knowing that, what are the odds our heroes and heroines will meekly accept being put back in their boxes?

Will they accept being told to go quietly back to their over-priced rented accommodation and get on with their lives and not to be forever whingeing about not being able to get a mortgage?

Will society tolerate the levels of homelessness we have seen to date?

Will communities allow their loved ones spend undignified days on hospital trolleys?

Will those bright young medics who dashed home from Australia any longer tolerate unacceptable, overcrowded conditions for their patients?

Will the nation find its voice and reject second best?

Will nurses, gardaí, teachers, and others accept a level of reward inadequate to nurture reasonable expectations?

Having realised that the meek are not about to inherit the Earth and that "sure we're a great little country" does not butter the parsnips, we can expect health and housing to be front and centre with a new urgency and the old excuses won't hold.

And when it comes to paying we'll remember that when we were at our wits' end recently lining out against Covid-19, the Government produced extra billions of euro that we never knew we had. Because when need was acknowledged, the political will changed.

Austerity, taxes or cuts will again confront us.

Remember those inferences that European fiscal or State Aid rules were somehow blocking the off balance sheet funding for housing? We won't be hearing that again either.

Government will get bigger and things will never be quite the same.

Every global crisis where ordinary folk have to fight together to protect their community invariably leave a legacy of social tension and unease.

The world changed after WW1, even the Treaty of Versailles recognised that "peace can be established only if it is based on social justice". Really there was a social revolution. Women got the vote, compulsory school attendance to age 14 was introduced. Workers demanded to be rewarded and more much more changed for ever.

The world changed again after WW2. Within a year or two in the UK the Butler Education Act and the establishment of the National Health Service revolutionised British life. In Ireland, Seán Lemass introduced the most comprehensive labour legislation.

Yes, post-crisis people get louder, governments get bigger. Even the world order changes. For us, last month it was Beijing and Brussels where once it would have been the UK and the US.

Politics is driven by compromise and pragmatism and self-protection.

And political will is all.