Noonan to ‘cut rope’ for Labour in budget

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has given his clearest indication yet that Fine Gael will manage to “cut some rope” for their troubled coalition partners by reducing the expected budget adjustment figure by up to €500m.

Speaking before travelling to the Fine Gael parliamentary party think-in in Laois, Mr Noonan warned that while Budget 2014 was going to be “very tough”, he believed the adjustment could be as low as €2.5bn.

“You see the debate in the newspapers that Labour want to go lighter. But, I mean, €2.5bn is still a very tough budget. So somewhere between €2.5bn and €3bn is the adjustment and that’s a very tough budget,” he said.