First budget cut is deepest as Enda breaks pledge for new era of honesty

SO now we know the first cut of the next budget — a slashing of the Government’s credibility regarding its pledge to usher in a new era of openness and honesty.

After smugly insisting it would discard to history the old backhanded, backroom politics of Fianna Fáil by publishing the outline of the budget by the end of October so that a “serious national dialogue” could ensue, Fine Gael and Labour have let party posturing dominate as usual.

With tensions between the two parties raging over whether the package of spending cuts and tax hikes will be left at “just” €3.6 billion or be pushed up even higher as Finance Minister Michael Noonan has indicated, Enda Kenny moved to slip the announcement back to November — and thus safely past the presidential election on October 27.

With floundering Fine Gael candidate Gay Mitchell battling to come in with a vote share that is merely hopeless rather than humiliating, and Labour’s Michael D Higgins locked in a dogfight with break- out front-runner Seán Gallagher — top brass in both parties have clearly calculated the last thing their candidates need is being splattered by a massive dollop of bad news in the final days of the campaign.

With grim irony, Fine Gael is still talking up its “openness” initiative, comparing it with “the dysfunction of the previous Government’s budget process”.

But even Fianna Fáil did not try to hoodwink voters in their dying days in power as they went ahead with the publication of a damning four-year blueprint for IMF-approved cuts during the Donegal South West by-election campaign last November.

But then Fianna Fáil knew it had nothing to lose — except the by-election and the following general election — so publication was hardly going to make them much more hated than they already were.

But Mr Higgins is now effectively the joint Government candidate for the Áras after Mitchell’s car- crash campaign. And Mr Kenny and Eamon Gilmore are quite happy to jettison their promises about “new politics” at the first test, as long as it keeps what they consider the “Fianna Fáil sleeper” Gallagher out of the presidency.

The delayed announcement, in November, of the tax and spend plans for the next three years will be followed a week later by a slashed capital spending schedule, and then a comprehensive review of spending — in reality comprehensive cuts — before yet another moral-busting budget on December 6.

Mr Kenny boasted to one opposition TD: “You’ll be drowned in information and debates about this budget.”

But by trying to buy petty party political advantage by delaying the full scale of the €4bn tidal wave of cuts and taxes heading our way, the Taoiseach’s talk of restoring honesty to high office is sunk.