Something’s rotten in State of Ireland: The Coalition and its regressive budget

WHEN Ministers Noonan and Howlin announce Budget 2013 later today, they will be going through the motions: most of the headline-grabbing measures have been leaked over the past week.

The intense rumour-mongering is the nadir for a jaded Government that swept to power on a platform of transparency, but now appears as rotten as many of the regressive fiscal measures that will be revealed in the Dáil this afternoon.

It was all so different in the heady post-election days of 2010, when the new Fine Gael and Labour coalition vowed it would usher in a new era of accountability.