Fergus Finlay: Huge budget opportunity to offer meaningful response to real need

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe (right) and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Michael McGrath.

 I once worked with a very wise man. I’d better not tell you his name because you’ll all be after him. He was one of those men who was generous with his time and had buckets of insight from years of challenging experience. The more you worked with him, the more you learned.

I went to him for advice once when I was grappling with a particularly knotty problem. The issue was that I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know whether I could afford it. To use the modern term, I wasn’t sure if the solution was sustainable.