Kenny set for ‘state of the nation’ TV address

ENDA KENNY will deliver a “state of the nation” address on television tomorrow night about the budget and the eurozone crisis.

Confirmation came after negotiations between the Government and RTÉ about the length and format of the Taoiseach’s address.

The speech will go ahead just after tomorrow’s 9pm news on RTÉ 1. Mr Kenny will speak for about 10 minutes from his office in Government Buildings.

Previous such addresses by taoisigh have tended to be less than 10 minutes in duration, but it is thought at one stage the Government was pushing for 15 minutes for Mr Kenny.

He will follow in the footsteps of previous Fine Gael taoisigh Garret FitzGerald and Liam Cosgrave, both of whom made televised addresses to the nation.

But arguably the two most famous addresses were made by Fianna Fáil taoisigh.

In 1969, Jack Lynch warned that the Republic could “no longer stand by” and see innocent people injured following the outbreak of violence in the North, while in 1980, Charles Haughey told citizens that the country was “living a way beyond our means”.

The negotiations over Mr Kenny’s address were finalised as the latest exchequer figures revealed tax revenues for the year to date were running over €500 million below Department of Finance expectations.

The figures for the first 11 months of the year show the state collected a total of €31.8 billion in taxes, some €520m less than expected.

However, the shortfall is not expected to affect the adjustment figure for the budget, with the Government settled on a total of €3.8bn in spending cuts and tax hikes.

In a break from the tradition of a single budget speech, Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin will announce the spending cuts on Monday, while Finance Minister Michael Noonan will announce the tax hikes on Tuesday.

In his speech tomorrow night, Mr Kenny will outline the Coalition’s budget-ary priorities — which he has previously said are the protection of jobs and the most vulnerable in society.

He is expected to touch upon the “leaderless” condition in which the country found itself this time last year, when the previous administration had been forced into the bailout.

He will likely claim that his Government has returned stability and confidence and made some progress in renegotiating the bailout deal.

But he will almost certainly emphasise that there is a “long way to go” and that the Government has a series of difficult budgets to implement, starting next week.

Mr Kenny is also expected to address the wider eurozone crisis now that Germany and France have laid out plans to resolve it which would involve difficult changes to the rules and structures governing the EU.