With a roaring economy and public finances in rude good health the last thing the Minister for Finance wants to do is spend it all in an attempt to win the next general election, he tells everyone.
He wants us to be more German - to be prudent, to save for the future, to restrain ourselves. He has told his ministerial colleagues as much in recent weeks, and gave them another talking-to at Tuesday’s cabinet.
Yesterday Taoiseach Leo Varadkar joined the refrain - castigating Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin for going around the country promising the divil and all to anyone who would give him a hearing.
For good measure, Varadkar then revved up his troops at the Fine Gael parliamentary party last night with further tales of Fianna Fail’s nefarious plots and the dire plight that would await the Nation if voters were taken in by this sort of snake oil.
"We have to call them out for what they are," he declared, according to those present. It sounds like he 'sent em home sweatin'.
All very well, this talk of prudence and responsibility. But in practice it involves saying no to a host of powerful, vocal, media-friendly and sometimes deserving special-interest groups. That is the sort of thing that politicians really do not like doing.
For one example, Paschal’s officials meet the trade unions tomorrow. They are seeking to reopen the agreement they made last year to pay younger public servants more.
Will he shake his head and enter a nolle prosequi? More likely he’ll adopt the more sensible approach to the matter: proceed with caution.
Of course, he will find that - and the prudence thing - is leichter gesagt als getan. Easier said than done.
Abject State failures
Elsewhere there are stories everywhere about the fallout from catastrophic failures in the provision of State services of one kind or another.
Our lead story details the treatment of women who were wrongly given the all-clear from mistaken smear test results. One of the women, Vicky Phelan, now has terminal cancer. She received a settlement in the High Court yesterday.
Meanwhile, the horrific case of the children abused in a foster home in Galway is prominent in the papers again. The stories are here and here.
And Elaine Edwards reports on the Tusla centre where youths were found to be consuming illicit substances.
