The entry of the Social Pillar into social partnership in 1996 constituted a significant breakthrough by the community and voluntary sector; it resulted from the leveraging of the power of campaigning organisations to secure a seat at the social partnership table where policy which impacted them was being formed. Their entry and participation fundamentally reframed the relationship between the sector and the state; the sector established itself as having a role in policy formation due to its direct experience of the impact of policy; this has continued beyond the life of social partnership, although it has never been formalised and does not go beyond consultation. At the same time the participation of the Social Pillar in the corporatist social partnership model resulted in its absorbing and being absorbed by the culture of consensus which drove it. Social partnership became the political tool of a government which used it to bolster its economic policy, generate political support and distribute the spoils of the economic prosperity which the model was credited with creating. When social partnership collapsed, amid a catastrophic economic and fiscal collapse, the Social Pillar, having no political capital, was powerless and adrift, without a role or influence, irrelevant and bereft of its campaigning edge