When Charlie McCreevy gets to his feet on Wednesday to unveil his fourth Budget, the Kildare TD will no doubt turn in a typically bravura performance.

The self-congratulatory rhetoric - and there should be plenty of it if his past outings are any guide - will mask but not completely disguise the fact that the Minister for Finance will also be eating a few slices of humble pie.

After refusing to talk to the credit unions for two years, McCreevy is set to concede to their demand that the savings of their members should not be taxed.

The phased individualisation of tax allowances which was the centrepiece of last year's Budget will be scaled back substantially and, after a year of telling the unions that inflation would sort itself out, the Minister is expected to unveil a package of measures to tackle the problem and keep the social partnership alive.

This year has not gone well for the Minister for Finance. The chutzpah which carried him through the ups and downs of his first three years in office finally wore thin last summer. The rock on which he foundered was the appointment of Hugh O'Flaherty - the controversial former Supreme Court judge - to the board of the European Investment Bank.

The resulting backlash drove the popularity of the Government and its leaders to new lows and he has paid the price. The Finance Minister, who famously let the Taoiseach see his first Budget speech only 30 minutes before he went into the Dail chamber, has had his wings clipped.

This year he was required to brief his Cabinet colleagues at a special one-day meeting. The inference was clear: older and wiser heads in the Cabinet wanted to ensure that that this time there would be none of the political booby-traps which have characterised his previous efforts. It must have been a humbling moment for the proud and headstrong Minister.

The journey to the Cabinet table has been a long one for the 52-year-old accountant who grew up beside the 14th lock on the Grand Canal, six miles from Naas. McCreevy's father, also Charles, was the lock-keeper and died when Charles jnr was just four years old. His eldest son had the traumatic experience of seeing his father fall out of bed after a fatal heart attack.

It was left to his mother, Eileen, to take over operating the lock and a 50-acre farm, as well as bring up McCreevy and his three brothers. His mother was the enduring influence on McCreevy's life and the source of his Fianna Fail politics. It was also from her that he picked up his love of gambling, staying up late into the night keeping her company as she played in the local poker schools.

As the eldest son of a widow, McCreevy found himself having to accept adult responsibilities early in life and believes this was a critical influence on him. An al tar boy for seven years, he parted company with the church after leaving Gormanston College, sickened by what he saw as the hypocrisy of much of Irish Catholicism.

But in a December 1988 interview he admitted that "every night, unless I am ferociously drunk, I kneel down and say a few prayers". It was an example of the candour that made the then maverick backbench TD popular with the media and the public.

McCreevy was one of the wave of new TDs who swept into the Dail in Jack Lynch's 1977 landslide election victory. His mother died the following year. He was cultivated by Charles Haughey and supported him in his leadership bid in 1979, but within two years found himself denied the party whip for his criticism of Haughey.

In a speech that would not be out of place today, he accused his party of setting out to buy votes in the 1981 election. Irish political parties were "prostituting themselves and debasing democracy" and "making the people ungovernable through promising everything", he said.

McCreevy spent the following 10 years in the political wilderness, participating in unsuccessful heaves against Haughey and toying with the idea of joining the Progressive Democrats in 1986. He has remained personally and ideologically close to Mary Harney ever since.

His mother was the enduring influence on McCreevy's life

His rehabilitation came in 1992 when Albert Reynolds ousted Haughey. He joined the cabinet as Minister for Social Welfare, quickly establishing his rightwing credentials by instigating a series of cuts known as the Dirty Dozen. For the first time in 16 years, McCreevy skipped the annual Cheltenham racing festival.

Following the collapse of the Fianna Fail/ Progressive Democrat government, McCreevy became Minister for Tourism and Trade in the coalition with Labour and DL which followed, but it was not until Bertie Ahern put together his opposition front bench in early 1995 that he got his hands on the finance brief.

His lacklustre performance as opposition spokesman led to doubts that he would hold on to the portfolio after the 1997 election, but he confounded his critics, no doubt with the support of his friend Mary Harney, who was now Tanaiste.

At last McCreevy had the opportunity to put in place the low-tax, low-spending policies he had advocated from the backbenches for all those years. Not surprisingly, he threw himself into the job - giving up drink and other distractions.

The core of the new Government's economic policy was to keep growth in public spending to 4 per cent a year. It barely survived the first Budget and neither did the Minister's good relations with the press. The Budget was roundly criticised for concentrating too much on delivering tax cuts for the well off. But the real problem was a plan to tax credit union savings which had to be abandoned in the face of a backbench revolt. McCreevy was furious and refused to talk to the credit union movement, believing it had backtracked on an earlier agreement.

McCreevy's self-belief was undiminished by the episode and, after delivering a relatively problem-free Budget in 1998, his stock was good with the backbenchers once again. His name started to be mentioned as a possible successor to Ahern, who was looking increasingly vulnerable as the Moriarty and Flood tribunals went about their work.

McCreevy felt cocky enough to proffer advice to his boss in early 1999. The Taoiseach, he said "wouldn't be in half the difficulty " if he took a "reasonable, rational approach" to the media and was not half as helpful. This, McCreevy clearly believed, was the secret of his own success.

The tactic seemed to be working for him: McCreevy quietly divorced his first wife and married Noeleen, his partner of 17 years, that summer. He also rode out the storm over his decision to holiday in the villa of businessman Ulick McEvaddy by simply refusing to answer questions about his personal affairs while his fellow villa guest, the Tanaiste, squirmed in public over the issue.

Any designs he might have had on the leadership of Fianna Fail went out the window with Budget 2000, however. Once again he was forced into an embarrassing climbdown - this time over the individualisation of tax allowances.

Budget 2001 will be a very different affair: blunder-free and firmly in keeping with Fianna Fail's more traditional populist values.

Or so his Cabinet colleagues think.