Never mind the barstools

IN the good old days of the Celtic Tiger, the one thing sure to raise the ire of the punter was increases to the price of the pint and a box of 20.

Had you walked into any pub during Michael Noonan’s budget speech yesterday, you’d probably found more weightier issues on people’s minds — with most just focused on keeping their heads above water and paying their bills.

That was the case in Devitt’s on Dublin’s Camden Street, where the budget wasn’t even on the television. With the barman pointing out that “everyone knows what’s coming so they’d rather not have it on”, it was pretty obvious that people were becoming numbed to bad news budgets.