Gerard Howlin: Weaning ourselves off economic methadone will be very difficult

Borrowing will not pay for permanently increased current spending — only tax will

What is being deliberately planned for and put in place is permanently increased provision in health especially, but in housing too. What is not in sight, is any plan to pay for any of it, on a sustainable basis.

IT is only now, as departments unveil the detail of their allocations, and as headline announcements yesterday are absorbed, that the impact of the budget unfurls. On TV and radio shows where the finance and public expenditure ministers are questioned in depth, as special interests react and, critically, as TDs feel the response on the ground locally, this budget will pass muster — or run into trouble. It is the days after that are always crucial.

An amusing aside on Leo Varadkar is that the oompa-loompas in his chocolate factory were busily publicising the content of the budget before they were announced in the Dáil. I vividly remember the budgetary omerta of yesteryear, when such things could only be discreetly leaked, but never brazenly publicised. Once upon a time, it was so grave an offence that then minister of state at the Department of Finance, Phil Hogan,  resigned because his office inadvertently faxed (remember what a fax was?) budget details to the media. In 1947 in the UK, then chancellor of the exchequer Hugh Dalton resigned because he gave sensitive budget information to a newspaper which was on the streets 20 minutes before he spoke. Budgetary omerta has been flagrantly breached for years. It is now buried.