Too late to buy popularity, but Government could gain respect

DEAR ENDA, Joan, Michael and Brendan, I’m writing to you because you’re the four people who together constitute the economic engine room of the government. 

And of course I don’t mean any impertinence by not using your ministerial titles. It’s just that I have something on my mind that I need to ask you to think about. And it’s urgent.

In your spring statement, and more or less ever since, you’ve made it clear that you intend to give us back something around €750m in tax reductions in the October budget — more if the finances allow. Over the next few weeks, you’ll be starting the preparations for that budget in earnest, as you start to look at the spending proposals coming in from different government departments.