Gavan Reilly: Boring Budget is Micheál’s missed opportunity to make a mark

By now all the leaks have been confirmed, and the details formally revealed - the second budget of this three-legged coalition, with about five billion a year in extra spending, albeit two-thirds of it ringfenced to take care of demographic pressures.

This column is being written with the disadvantage of time - it’s Monday night so the details are still only sketchy leaks - but there is already a clear theme to the package being put together by Paschal Donohoe, Michael McGrath and the three amigos running their respective parties.

That theme is that there is no major theme at all.

To be fair to the government: the free flow of money from last year is no longer there, nor appropriate. Last year was an aberration: the government then announced a spending package of close to €18 billion - billion! - to keep the economy and health services alive in the midst of unprecedented challenge. The challenge of the day meant there was no scope for a ‘big idea’, a rabbit out of a hat, a bold vision for what would come in future.

This year there is no magic money tree. There certainly isn’t the economic imperative to pump borrowed money – at least certainly not on last year’s scale. But there is still permission to do so: the European Fiscal Compact rules that usually require countries to balance the books won’t apply for another year. That’s a crucial point: in twelve months’ time the focus will have to be more long-term. (It will also be the first budget after the report of a major commission on the future of taxation -which could well recommend raising taxes in several areas - and, awkwardly, Micheál Martin’s last Budget as Taoiseach.)

In short, therefore, this is the coalition’s first major chance to start moving markets and really leave an imprint on the country - and it’s the last chance to do it before the cold and clinical financial straitjacket gets wrapped around the country’s finances again.

And when you think of it in those terms, what is there to get excited about in today’s Budget? Where is the novel policy that makes you stop and say, ‘Right, things are different now?’ ’ There might be cutprice public transport for young adults but why not spend half a billion a year making it free for everyone? Where’s the half-billion a year it might cost to make all public transport free, in a bold gesture to reduce climate emissions? Where’s the €3.2 billion a year it might cost to nationalise the childcare industry, which would unleash huge spending by families currently sustaining the equivalent of a second mortgage?

Instead there’s the indexation of tax bands, a fiver on weekly welfare payments, a modest increase to student grants to help pay for crazy accommodation, and… what else? Sure, the overall plan on housing was already published, and there’s more money to expand a health service, but strip away the stuff which is demanded by demographics anyway - the likes of extra Gardaí, teachers, SNAs - and you’re not left with a very innovative or ambitious vision for how Ireland is to be run differently in future.

What’s more, at a time when the government parties are now playing catch-up in the opinion polls, there’s certainly very little to make this administration seem wildly different from the last one.