Childcare was the big disappointment for trade unionists in the Budget. However, on its own it will not be enough to see the Irish Congress of Trade Unions executive walk away from the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF).
The executive meets tomorrow morning to decide whether the outcome of this week's PPF pay review, combined with yesterday's tax cuts, are adequate.
Even SIPTU's national equality officer Ms Rosheen Call ender, who said she was "very disappointed there was no tax relief for childcare costs", accepted the overall concessions to the PAYE sector offered significant compensation for inflation.
The union's vice-president, Mr Jack O'Connor, who put down a marker last September to the Government and employers that net pay increases of 5 per cent, - or their equivalent in tax cuts - were needed, gave the Budget a cautious welcome.
He said initial analysis suggested the Budget and the 3 percent agreed in the pay review on Tuesday would deliver about 4.5 per cent to people on the average industrial wage. With the cut of 0.5 per cent in employees' PRSI this just about met the SIPTU criteria.
"It would appear the package restores the original value of the PPF", Mr O'Connor said, "particularly if you afford any credibility to projections of inflation reducing next year.
"But it was a pity money was wasted reducing the top rate of tax. It would have been better to have taken more people out of the top tax rate, or out of the tax net altogether."
Another supporter of past national agreements, Civil and Public Service Union general secretary Mr Blair Horan, took a similar view. His 13,000 relatively low-paid public servants will do well out of the Budget.
He estimated the Minister had delivered the overall £1.2 billion package ICTU had been looking for. He estimated tax and pay improvements are optimised at around 9 per cent for people approaching the top of his union's civil service grades on about £20,000 a year. But most of his members will be 5 per cent better off.
One sweetener for the CPSU, and other civil service unions, is a commitment by Mr McCreevy to invest £10 million to provide 15 new creches as part of the Government's decentralisation programme.
Another is the commitment to examine gain-sharing for the public service. Whether that is enough to prevent the traditionally militant CPSU from voting to reject the PPF review proposals remains to be seen.
There is no doubt about the attitude of the ATGWU. Its Irish secretary, Mr Mick O'Reilly, described the Budget as "a missed opportunity to seriously tackle in a meaningful way the inherent inequalities within our society".
"When you consider that the Government has a surplus in the region of £4 billion, many people will be disappointed that the Minister did not do more to narrow the economic gap between ordinary people and the wealthy and redistribute the nation's wealth more equitably."
He welcomed the increases in social-welfare payments and child benefit and the tax changes because they benefited the low-paid.
However, the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) said the £8-aweek rise in unemployment payments was "the absolute minimum increase that could have been made without provoking a crisis in social partnership". Its general secretary, Mr Tony Monks, said the increase in basic social welfare payments should have been at least £10 a week. "Unless the anti-inflationary measures deliver a substantially reduced rate of inflation, we are very concerned that the value of this payment will yet again be wiped out."