Budget 2020: Minister stuck in a straight jacket

Paschal Donohoe took as his Budget 2020 baseline scenario the hardest possible Brexit with the UK crashing out of the EU, if not at the end of October then sometime in the months following. This included a doomsday collapse of the economy from a 5.5% GDP growth scenario this year (four times faster than that forecast for the EU as a whole) to just 0.7% next year.

He has also assumed that the 54,000 jobs expected to be created will not happen and has allowed for a €365m social welfare increase to cover the increased unemployment rate. If this assumed disorderly Brexit takes place next year, the burden will fall most heavily on the indigenous business sector, which mainly exports to the UK.