Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act hint that a robust debate took place over the timing of this year's budget.

Two dates were considered: October 23rd and December 4th. Why the Cabinet plumped for the latter date remains a mystery as the papers relating to the decision were not released. However, the Department did send a copy of the report to the Budget Day Working Group, which considered the same issue in 2001. They boiled the decision down to a trade-off between the operational constraints of implementing budget day changes and the need for the most up-to-date data on which to build the budget.

An October budget has the advantage of giving the Revenue and Social Welfare two months to implement changes in time for the tax year, starting in January. The difficulty with an early budget is that the Minister is operating without the benefit of economic data for the last quarter of the year. The situation is reversed with a December budget.

The working group concluded that on balance a December budget made sense last year, but from then on - i.e this year - an early budget was preferable.

The Government has decided to ignore this piece of advice and we can only speculate as to the reason. The most obvious is the train wreck that passes for the Government finances at present. Any sort of responsible budget framed on the basis of the Exchequer figures for the first three quarters of this year would be very miserly indeed.