Budget 2018: Something for everyone in audience

Paschal Donohoe’s first budget was a bit like The Late Late Show — something for everyone in the audience, a stand-still patchwork quilt that is prudent and sober but lacking in ambition. It tinkers at the edges but fails to offer an overall vision for the future.

There is nothing radical about it and it is, therefore, almost exactly as predicted, with little by way of innovation. Increasing, for instance, Vat on sunbeds from 13.5% to 23% is hardly an example of thinking big.

It should, of course, come as no surprise to anyone that there are no surprises in Budget 2018. Despite an apparent determination by Minister Donohoe to keep everything under wraps in the weeks preceding yesterday, there were leaks aplenty from all sides of Leinster House.