They have less use for knives these days in Merrion Street. After years of heavy cutbacks, the Government is in a mood for another expansionary budget. But stop right there if you think the crowd with the blades has gone away forever. Be assured. They’re still prowling around.

Knives are in constant readiness at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, (DEPR), spiritual home of Bord Snip types, and available for deployment at a moment’s notice. Now we have evidence to prove it. When it came to coffee time at a gathering in the department yesterday of officials and economists, attendees were treated to croissants and Danish buns neatly chopped in half. No joke. They certainly know how to cut in that branch of the Government.

Although there was nothing at all to stop anyone delving in for a second half, the advent of the “half-croissant” can mean only one thing: things are definitely on the up. There was hardly any coffee at the worst of times. Indeed, the Department of Foreign Affairs sold the best of its wine.

But that’s all behind us now. If the present rate of fiscal progress continues, they could be on the “three-quarter croissant” by year-end and move onwards to the “whole croissant” – untouched by any civil servant’s knife – in time for 2016, the signal year.

The arc of progress reads like an economic indicator in its own right. We might name each step as a point on the “DPER half-croissant index”. First the Big Mac index. Now this. Time for a coffee, surely.