The consequences of An Bord Snip Nua's recommendations on how to save money in the agriculture sector will be discussed today.

AWARD-WINNING actor Brendan Gleeson has warned a multi-million euro film he plans to shoot here next year will collapse if An Bord Snip Nua recommendations about the Irish Film Board are implemented.

IRISH universities and businesses are getting €1 million a week in research grants from the EU, but government R&D spending will have to be cut this year, Junior Minister Conor Lenihan has declared.

SOCIAL Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin has called for a debate on whether all mothers should continue to be entitled to child benefit.

FINANCE Minister Brian Lenihan stamped his authority on budget policy last night by dismissing the views of Tánaiste Mary Coughlan on the Bord Snip report and insisting her comments made little difference.

NEW research shows that Irish culture is a big money spinner for the economy, generating €11.8 billion in revenues last year and accounting for 7.6% of total GNP.

A NATIONAL strategy needs to be put in place for the Irish agri-food industry before it goes the way of the coal miners in Britain, the Agricultural Science Association annual conference was told in Dublin.

MASS street protests will lead Labour’s “all out” fight against NAMA, Eamon Gilmore yesterday pledged.

FINANCE Minister Brian Lenihan has threatened to “crack down” on public bodies using taxpayers’ money to fund campaigns against proposed spending cuts.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen was today called on to back an Oireachtas inquiry into what led to the banking crisis.

COLM McCARTHY has been reviled in certain quarters in recent weeks, but the public may shortly end up owing the economist a great deal.

A NUMBER of drug projects will be shut down if funding cuts proposed in Bord Snip are implemented.

COLM McCARTHY is a wily old fox. From past involvement in the late 1980s, he learned the mechanics of Government finances. Every year an annual ritual commences in early summer. Each line department submits its proposed budgetary outline for the following year. A series of bilateral meetings then takes place with dedicated officials in the Department of Finance. This arm wrestle usually involves incremental adjustment for inflation and the occasional initiative.

ONE of the Government’s most trusted economic advisors has said the minimum wage must fall by 10%.

THE likelihood of special needs assistants (SNAs) being withdrawn from thousands of children in schools will be strengthened by a recommendation from An Bord Snip Nua to cut their numbers by almost a fifth.

“THIS is coming from people who don’t understand poverty, who haven’t experienced poverty, who don’t know what it’s like to be on €200 a week, who don’t know what it is like on a Wednesday evening and no money left in the jar on the sideboard to buy the groceries on Thursday and the payment doesn’t come in until Friday.”

THE Government was accused of “softening people up” for cuts in dole and other social welfare payments by leaking details of finance plans to yesterday’s Sunday newspapers.

The future narrative of national politics seems foreseeable. The FF/Green government will circle the wagons and limp on in a weakened state. With each unpopular measure, the clamour for change will escalate. Eventually they will buckle on some specific issue

BEING asked by the editor to set out what I would do if I was taoiseach in 2009 is like a fantasy football competition.