When the gift-wrapping on all the goodies in Charlie McCreevy's sack was finally ripped away and the baubles of the Budget lay exposed, there was a dull sense of disappointment.
Sure, the Minister for Finance had provided something for everyone in the audience. But the "haves" received the largest and gaudiest presents while the lower-paid and the "have-nots" got something from the local pound shop.
The economy took precedence over the needs of society and, in a typical gung-ho approach, the Minister discarded traditional Fianna Fail policy and discriminated against women working in the home. For those Opposition parties that had expected to dine on crumbs after the most expansionary Budget of all time, he provided a rich porter cake. And Michael Noonan and Derek McDowell gave it an unrestrained lash.
Before that happened, however, the Minister had behaved like a bemused time-traveller as he juggled his figures, moving from 1999 to 2003 and then back to 2001 and 2002 as he searched for flattering percentages and made some promises this Government is unlikely to have the time to keep.
Over it all hung the rosiest economic atmosphere ever enjoyed by an Irish government. And Mr McCreevy predicted the good times would continue to roll. A GNP growth rate of 5.75 per year would continue for the next three years, he said; the numbers at work would rise by 2.5 per cent annually and unemployment would fall to about 4.5 per cent by 2002.
In this burgeoning Ireland, the Minister was determined that those at work would be rewarded. And those earning most would do best. The direction of the Budget pointed to 1997 when Mr McCreevy cut capital gains taxes from 40 to 20 per cent for the wealthy and tinkered with income tax allowances for the "little people".
Last year's shift in policy, which carefully focused available funds on the lower paid, has given way again to blunt cuts in income, corporation, capital gains and capital acquisition tax rates.
Individualising income tax bands was Mr McCreevy's way around the Supreme Court judgment in the Murphy case of 1980, which gave all married couples double the tax allowances of a single person.
From next year, a married couple, both working, will still get double the single rate; but where the wife or husband stays at home with children, the family will lose out.
It was such a brutally blunt approach to serving industry by dragooning women into the workforce that it generated howls of derision from the Opposition benches. And when Mr McCreevy sought to assist young married couples through the provision of creche facilities and in child benefit payments, his efforts were dismissed as "not enough". A £7 a week increase for old age pensioners, with £4 a week for those on the dole, drew a similar negative response.
There were many positive social initiatives, but they were spread thin and faded into insignificance when the big presents were handed out. A 2 per cent cut in the top and standard rates of income tax came as a super surprise.
Mr McCreevy made heavy weather of the commitment to cut the percentage of workers paying tax at the top rate to 20 per cent: after this Budget it would be down to 37 per cent, compared to 39 per cent in 1997. But he promised it would fall to 17 per cent by 2002.
ESRI advice that business didn't require further feather-bedding went out the window when the State decided to take on the cost of providing new skills and retraining workers. And while pensioners and the unemployed will have to wait until March to take delivery of their gift vouchers, small companies with trading incomes of less than £50,000 will have their corporation tax liability almost halved, to 12.5 per cent, from next January.
Similar good news was doled out to the owners of development land for offices and factories who were told their capital gains tax liability was being reduced from 40 to 20 per cent.
But the Minister's treatment of capital acquisition tax on gifts and inheritance was the most generous.
Under the guise of helping those dependants who might be forced to sell their rapidly appreciating family homes in order to pay inheritance tax, Mr McCreevy threw the door open to the super-rich. After exempting some homes from inheritance tax where the beneficiary had lived there for three years, and would not dispose of it for six years, he greatly increased the general thresholds at which tax would become payable. And then he telescoped the tax rates of 20, 30 and 40 per cent into a single rate of 20 per cent. Benefits - surprise, surprise - would flow from yesterday.
The lecture of the day had to do with public sector pay and negotiations on a new national wage agreement.
With an eye on the Garda and their PULSE pay claim, the Minister for Finance spoke of the need for a new pay system that rewarded positive outputs and outcomes, rather than pay people for simply agreeing to change. And he oiled the wheels of social partnership negotiations by offering £942 million in income tax concessions.
As Dublin began to choke on its growth, Mr McCreevy announced a radical new decentralisation round of "almost complete Departments of State and other public bodies", including the semi-state sector. But he didn't say where they were to go. He also stopped short of introducing promised Green taxes or of treating a parking space in Dublin city centre as a benefit in kind. But he accepted his current expenditure target of 4 per cent would be breached.
Michael Noonan regarded the package as the most socially divisive he had witnessed. With all of those hundreds of millions at his disposal, the Minister had delivered a "blindingly unfair" Budget devoid of social values. And he reached out to take family values into Fine Gael's arms.
Derek McDowell sang from the same hymn-sheet for the Labour Party. The fruits of growth were not being used to improve the living standards of people and his treatment of the poorest section was shabby and unfair. He wanted more money spent on health, education and other important social services. And he criticised the benefits handed out so generously to the highest earners in the economy.
At that stage, it was all over bar the shouting. The biggest Budget in the history of the State, with billions of pounds in revenue raised, spend and forgone . . . And Charlie McCreevy, the people's would-be Santa Claus, had blown it on the day by being too generous to the rich children.