The Government’s friends in Eurostat delivered a big setback to the outgoing administration a while back when they ruled that the abundant liabilities of Irish Water should remain on the State’s balance. Now another Eurostat ruling has resulted in the State recording a higher deficit last year than foreseen in Merrion Street.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan had expected to declare a 1.3 per cent of GDP deficit to end-2015, something of a glittering prize in fiscal terms given the horrors overcome since the crash. Not so fast, said the statisticians. To some disappointment in Merrion Street, the once-off conversion of preference shares in the nationalised AIB to ordinary shares has been designated a general government expenditure with follow-on implications for the deficit.

Whatever the technical reasons for that, the upshot is that the actual reported deficit for the purposes of European assessment came in at 2.3 per cent. As for the 1.3 per cent figure, it was relegated to the status of “underlying deficit”. This is code for a political badge of budgetary honour for the outgoing Government without the accompanying credit from all-important scrutineers in Brussels, who tend to focus quite rigidly on the headline figure.

When juicy tax returns were coming in last year, expectation gathered that the sunny uplands of a deficit in 1 per cent territory were in prospect for 2015. The deadline has now been pushed out to the current year, with a 1.1 per cent deficit foreseen for 2016. This is a little ahead of the budget day forecast last October, which assumed a 1.2 per cent deficit for 2016.

Debt ratio progress was ahead of target, however. Recall that Budget 2016 assumed general government debt would drop to 97 per cent of GDP in 2015 and dip in 2016 to 93 per cent of GDP. The actual return was 93.8 per cent of GDP at end-2015, with a ratio “just under” 89 per cent now foreseen for 2016. Progress yes, but there’s still more to do.