BUDGET 2016: Budget splurge is Government’s crude way of drumming up votes

A promised €1.5bn budgetary package doubled magically into a €3bn one. Just like that, writes Gerard Howlin

IRELAND is ready to receive its returned emigrants again. David Drumm, the ex-CEO of Anglo-Irish Bank, will feel at home, if he returns. On the basis of yesterday’s budget, little has changed since he went away. Strip away the veneer of economic-ology, or the blather about stability, and we are about back to where we started. Yesterday was a smash-and-grab at taxpayers’ money, to be spent before a general election. The only real issue — the one they almost messed up — was when that election would be. It doesn’t augur well, if they are fighting over the keys of the getaway car while attempting to leave the scene of the crime.

A promised €1.5bn budgetary package doubled magically into a €3bn one. Just like that! You have to wade through the “White Paper on Receipts and Expenditure”, published last Friday, to know why. When you include the supplementary budgets for 2015, there is as much additional money being spent on public services that ran over their budget, this year as is being spent on tax cuts and extra spending for 2016.