Tomorrow’s budget - Opportunity dressed in a hair-shirt

NOT since the great Monty Python sketch, in which north of England voices remember the awfulness of their upbringing, culminating in the proud, chest-swelling boast by one that “we lived in hole in road”, has there been such glee in misery.

Politicians, economists, commentators, trade unionists, employer representatives, and more or less anyone confronted with a microphone, have all accepted that tomorrow’s budget will be judged a success only if its severity surpasses anything endured in recent history.

Like Catholics of old, riven with guilt, we have been convinced that we have been naughty and we expect to be punished. The budget will have a profound impact on our incomes, but it has to do very much more.

It has to offer the prospect of recovery in the medium term, though how a tiny, open economy can work towards that when the head of the International Monetary Fund warns that the world is on the brink of financial meltdown; when a frenzy of panic is undermining share values all across the world, remains to be seen.

It is possible too that Finance Minister Brian Lenihan may have to tweak some of his plans after yesterday’s Paris summit of European leaders. Leaders of the euro bloc gathered in the Elysee Palace to try to hammer out a coordinated rescue package before panic-stricken stock markets reopened this morning.

This belated effort seems to be the only real prospect of riding out the storm even though interim measures were essential when they were taken.

In reality the solution to the crisis threatening our comfortable way of life will be, if it can be, enunciated on a stage far bigger than the one to be used by Mr Lenihan tomorrow afternoon. That, however, does not mean that there are not very many things we can do to put our own house in order.

Over the weekend Transport Minister Noel Dempsey called for a process that would lead to the dismissal of under-performing civil servants. He also, in the good cop part of his routine, said he would like to reward those who were doing a good job. Sadly, doing a good job in the private sector does not guarantee extra reward, it does not even guarantee that you get to keep your job anymore.

Mr Dempsey is the second minister to criticise the public service. His, and junior minister John McGuinness’s earlier statements, could be welcomed a little more enthusiastically if they were not made by members of the party that has run the country for decades.

Why are they trying to give the impression they have nothing to do with the problem, as if the Bolshoi Ballet ran the country through the boom years?

Their statements might inspire confidence if they were not members of the government who, just six weeks ago, went ahead with a 2.5% pay and pension increase for all public servants at a cost of €310 million.

There are many issues that need to be resolved in the public service, just as there are in the private sector.

Many of the schemes that protected property and capital from the taxman in the name of encouraging development must be confronted too if we want to live in an equitable society that can pay its bills.

Yes, there is a lot Mr Lenihan can do tomorrow to energise the country, to restore some sort of reality and justice in how we run this small country.

If he does not the hole-in-road sketch may not seem so funny in the long run.