The majority may have wanted to know about Charlie McCreevy's plans for taxation - the pint o' plain and the packet of 20 cigarettes - but those seeking the inside track simply wanted to know the colour of his tie.
Paddy Power Bookmakers had offered 5/2 that the Minister would wear blue when he delivered his Budget speech, though they lengthened the odds out to 7/1 and 10/1 for more leftish pinks and reds.
In the end, Mr McCreevy foiled those betting on the favourites, and opted for pink despite everything he has said about "pinkos".
"The biggest bet we had on that was €50. We had a few smaller bets, though the majority of them that we had were on blue and navy," said the bookmakers.
Keen to avoid suggestions that the Department of Finance might have made a few quid on the sly, Paddy Power said the bet had been laid before the Minister donned his garbs for the day. "And it wasn't laid by the Minister," one of the company's bookmakers said assuringly. Last week, the ever-dapper Mr McCreevy visited his usual tailor to be decked out for the occasion - the sixth time he has delivered his budgetary pronouncement to a waiting nation.
Happy as ever to cause confusion, the gambling-loving Kildare man opted for four rather than just one tie for the grey check suit he selected from Louis Copeland's Capel Street branch in Dublin.
"He bought a couple of striped colours and a couple of plain ones with a bit of colour through them," Mr Copeland told The Irish Times enigmatically, leaving no one any the wiser.
Offering comfort in advance of the toughest budget in a decade, Mr Copeland pointed out that life could be worse.
"There is, I am glad to say, no truth to the rumour that he bought a black suit and tie."
Defying the laws of sartorial taste, Paddy Power had laid 4/1 that Mr McCreevy would don orange, 50/1 on an open-neck and 100/1 on a priest's collar.
The bet on the Minister's tie is a copy of a longstanding punt in the United Kingdom, where bookies offer odds on the hat colour worn by the Queen to the Ascot Races.
