'Michael the Machete' gets ready for December budget day

DÁIL SKETCH:ANOTHER BIG axe falls in December. The next round of slash and burn will be announced by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, who will deliver his poisoned chalice on December 6th.

Back in the 1980s then finance minister Ray MacSharry was dubbed “Mack the knife” for the severe cuts he made across every government department.

But the knives are bigger now and “Michael the Machete” will be cutting up to €4 billion on budget day. His target is to get the economy back to a deficit of 8.6 per cent of GDP.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny announced budget day to a virtually empty Dáil chamber and press gallery. His party colleague Bernard Durkan almost casually asked about a date for the budget and estimates just about the time Government officials were issuing briefing notes to journalists. No doubt a clear case of serendipity.

Enda put the best gloss he could on the bad news by saying what he intended to do this year “is very different to what has applied to any other budget to date”.

Instead of no information on what’s coming down the tracks, the light at the end of the tunnel will most likely be blocked by the torrent of documentation to be released in advance of budget day.

There’ll be a medium-term fiscal outline for 2012 to 2015, followed by the publication of the capital spending programme, which will finally confirm which capital projects will go ahead, and which won’t.

Mid-November will bring publication of the much vaunted public sector reforms from the comprehensive spending review, followed by the budgetary estimates and a White Paper on receipts and expenditure.

Nobody will be able to say they didn’t know the details.

But it was a little detail in the plan for the proposed embankment at the seafront in Clontarf that bypassed all councillors, TDs and other public representatives when planning permission was given for flood defence.

No objections were put in when permission was granted in 2008 for the 2.75 metre high wall to protect against flooding. Independent TD for Dublin North Central Finian McGrath, who addressed a protest in Clontarf on Sunday, was outraged at the proposal and quick to point out that he was not a councillor at the time of the decision.

The Taoiseach pointed to his “matrimonial connection” with the area – his wife Fionnuala O’Kelly is from the locality. Calling it the Battle of Clontarf part II, he said there was a problem, and highlighted that no councillors had noticed that the wall would be almost 3 metres high. He quipped: “I’m not sure how that slipped through all the vigilant councillors on Dublin city council”.

There were bemused responses when he announced that “there are some other suspicions about the real nature of the reason for a mound of that scale in the first instance”.

He added: “nobody wants to see the pictures we saw in Dublin several years ago where people with wellingtons were standing in flooded streets.” Who could he be referring to?