Gavan Reilly: The mystery of the big Budget row that isn’t
You know that old saying about a week being a long time in politics? Well, if a week’s a long time in politics, what’s a month? What’s two months, or three, or four? What’s nineteen weeks?
Because that’s how far away Budget Day is. If you’re an eager beaver who picked up your copy of the Chronicle on Tuesday evening, Budget Day is still 133 sleeps away. Not until October 10th will Michael McGrath and Paschal Donohoe be on their feet in the Dáil chamber confirming what they’re doing to our tax laws and how they plan to dole out the country’s cash for 2024.
You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise, though. Talk of a €10 billion surplus this year (and another €55 billion in the three years to come), as predicted on these pages a few weeks ago, has sent the government into auctioneering overdrive and we’re not even in the same season as the Budget.
133 days is enough time for a Chinese wet market/reckless scientist/rogue operative (whatever you’re having yourself) to unleash a pandemic on the planet. As proven by Anthony Scaramucci, it’s enough time to go through twelve White House communications directors. Who knows how many leaders the Tories could have ploughed through between now and October 10th? After Liz Truss was outlasted by a lettuce, what’s next? Will we have memes of Penny Mordaunt’s premiership being compared to a rotting rhubarb? Jeremy Hunt versus a plum pie?
Among the odd things of the last week’s budget spat is how much of a non-spat it really is. Last year’s Budget offered about €800 in tax cuts to full-time workers on salaries of around €50,000. It’s daft to presume that the same government that coughed up €800 last year would be suddenly wracked by ideological chasms to repeat the trick when there’s so much more money available.
If there’s anything to be fighting over it’s the fact that Fianna Fáil holds the tax ministry (in Michael McGrath) but has allowed Fine Gael to seize the publicity initiative by putting the idea firmly on the table. Come Budget time we might not remember who first suggested such a significant tax cut, but we might well remember it by the time of the next election.
Had Fianna Fáil not taken the bait of public replying the story wouldn’t have grown any legs either. When the Budget is both far away, and tax cuts of this magnitude are likely, why draw further attention to a pointless row by taking public issue with it? It’s not surprising that some FF figures have been quoted over the weekend as lamenting the party’s sulking retorts. Ignoring an anodyne op-ed would have made its contents simply disappear. Raising voices in reply merely provided enough oxygen to set fire to the story. And anyway, who are Fianna Fail to complain about public Budget negotiations when Willie O’Dea has carved out a personal reputation for demanding pension increases?
It’s all just an utterly daft, contrived, needless, pointless row. And there’s nineteen more weeks of this to go. God help us all…