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The biggest budget in the history of big budgets.
Look at the size!
The Budget Boys couldn’t resist drawing attention to this when they came to the Convention Center to show off their colossal payouts.
“The scale of this budget package is unprecedented. . . Almost eight times last year’s budget. . . More ambitious budget. . . The largest budget in the history of the Irish State ”, they declared with pride.
Over the span of 90 minutes of two speeches, Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath not only loosened the strings on the national purse, they pulled them out with a vengeance and then burned the purse.
They intend to spend nearly € 18 billion on a CoronaBudget wave, distributing their cash faster and faster than a virus at a White House reception.
All of this was announced in advance to the media, as is now the tradition these days of modern budgets and no surprises.
Paschal and Michael were every inch of the Blues Brothers in their soft navy blue suits and ties in different shades of blue.
This led to a gentle probing from Ceann Comhairle when it issued the usual reminders to TDs not to put any information from their advance copies of budget statements into the public domain until the Minister says so first in chamber.
“I suppose that’s in case Morning Ireland or the national media have missed something so far,” Seán Ó Fearghaíl reflected dryly, amid laughter from all the deputies, well aware of the joke.
Paschal and Michael were every inch of the Blues Brothers in their soft navy blue suits and ties in different shades of blue. That wouldn’t have been allowed in the old days of Fianna Fáil. But now they are all full of blue.
Work
That’s what Ged Nash said of Labor, examining the highly expensive manual labor that had just been presented by the Finance Minister at Fine Gael and the Minister for Expenditure and Public Reform at Fianna Fáil. After a long “engagement” of trust and supply between the parties and a government wedding in June, they finally consummated their marriage on budget day.
“Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have now become one, for better or for worse.”
As the analogies go, this one would put anyone off.
Ged decided to play it to laugh at part of his speech. “For the good of the country, I hope the next few months will get through their disastrous honeymoon period of self-inflicted mistakes, exploding clown cars and comical self-improvement games.”
Then, when the billions in supports and subsidies took hold of the opposition bodies in the auditorium of the Convention Center, he admitted: “All that said, it would be rude for me and my colleagues not to recognize that there is much to receive in this package. . “
They are made of a harder material in Sinn Féin.
Some people may have felt a bit sorry for Pearse Doherty, who had the unenviable task of looking into the bottomless pit of pandemic funds promised by Donohoe and McGrath to find fault with his generosity. But unsurprisingly, this was not a problem for him or for his colleague Mairéad Farrell, who spoke after him.
They spoiled it from start to finish.
Where was the “certainty”? he demanded. “This budget has not provided that certainty.”
Solid gold
With a global pandemic in full swing and a dangerous Brexit advancing in steam, it would have been easier for ministers to turn their words into solid gold and bang them into bracelets than to stand up and promise, never mind to provide, certainty.
“Sinn Féin would have taken a different tack,” Doherty persisted, yelling against a solid wall of spending.
In the old days (last year), the mere idea of the government spending so many billions would have caused consternation. It seems like there is a life to go since the Irish Tax Advisory Council (IFAC) harshly criticized Leo Varadkar’s administration for failing to meet recommended spending guidelines.
Tuesday must have been a difficult day for IFAC members, but you will have heard the message from Ministers that these are not normal times. We hear they don’t have oxygen anymore, thanks to the brandy.
Brendan Howlin, a former Labor leader who was Minister of Public Expenditure before this year’s change of government, was like a chicken on a hot griddle, walking up and down the stairs from his balcony seat as the afternoon wore on.
The Minister of Education was dressed for business, in her signature pearls the size of gobstoppers
After years of trying to keep public finances in check, when he could barely breathe without referring to FEMPI (Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest), the flood of funding announcements must have sounded shocking.
Capital infrastructure projects all over the place, at, or in this under-penny budget, under-18 billion. Could this finally spell a new dawn for Dunkettle Rotunda?
Shopping list
Thanks to the Covid, it seems that all the cabinet ministers received their shopping list of demands. They had to be nailed to their seats for speeches to prevent them from rushing out for interviews. It is rarely wonderful, even if it is a pandemic and the threat of financial collapse to see them smile on budget day.
The Education Minister was dressed for business, sporting her signature gobstoppers-sized pearls and a glittering Lady Hale spider brooch. Lady Hale was the UK Supreme Court Justice who ruled that Boris Johnson illegally extended the UK Parliament, and her pin garnered almost as many headlines as her ruling.
No major government speech is complete without a comforting quote at the end. Paschal played safe with one of Seamus Heaney: “If we spend the winter, we can spend the summer anywhere.”
Michael chose a phrase from JFK al Dáil’s speech in 1963: “It is that quality of the Irish, that remarkable combination of hope, confidence and imagination, that is needed more than ever.”
There was no applause for any of the ministers when they finished speaking in the empty atmosphere of the Convention Center. If this had been the Dáil camera at Leinster House, they wouldn’t have been so scammed.
They want their efforts to keep the country running until the twin threats of Covid and Brexit pass.
And, most of all, the Budget Boys hope to be the last of the big spenders.
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