Credit where credit is due. Those officials at the Department of Finance are a vastly under-rated mob. At a time when the medium-term outlook for the Irish economy is still uncertain, the mandarins in Merrion Street managed to predict Irish tax receipts over the first nine months of the year to within €4 million of their actual out-turn.
Where it had foreseen revenues of €26.882 billion, the actual figure reported yesterday was €26.886 billion – that’s a margin of error of just 0.01 per cent. Impressive, wouldn’t you say? Especially when you consider that two of the largest tax categories – income tax and VAT – undershot predictions.
And to think that no one in the department could accurately estimate tax revenues to within a country mile during the boom. Or that they couldn’t find an economist in the place when we were blowing all those billions. Clearly the department has upped its game
Of course, it could just be a political two-step. Most people assume it's just that. In much that same way that TDs can for years frustrate reform of the Seanad only for many of those same public representatives to now accuse the chamber of being elitist and irrelevant, so government (of either hue) has had an uncanny knack of getting the budgetary arithmetic to tot up to the sum it requires to reinforce its budgetary message.
In this case, with tax on target, revenue overall slightly ahead and spending slightly behind, the best assessment is that Minister Noonan is creating some financial wriggle room for himself ahead of the budget.
The Government has also been playing a long game with both taxpayers and the troika over the extra resources available through the promissory note deal. And the same can be said about the endless debate on a €3.1 billion target.
If as much effort went into actually framing the budget as did into flying kites and softening up public expectation so that people are ridiculously grateful for not faring quite as badly as they had feared, this Government would have instituted reform for which it would truly deserve credit.
