The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, could be forgiven if he looked less than completely focused as he delivered his Budget speech yesterday.
The Budget, in many respects, was constructed with one eye on the next round of talks on a national wage agreement and his proposals on decentralisation were formulated perhaps with an eye on next year's local elections.
Mr McCreevy made it quite clear that he expects the next national wage agreement to produce pay increases a long way short of the 7.2 per cent over 18 months which the current agreement threw up. He stressed the need to get costs and prices "back into balance" with those that pertain elsewhere in the European Union and argued that low inflation and the benchmarking awards justify pay moderation. His 25 cent increase on cigarettes and five cent increase on petrol and diesel are almost token (although the hauliers would not agree) and one wonders why he bothered at all. The revenue from the tax increases is not much needed by him but he may come to regret the 0.4 per cent hike they will give the inflation rate.
Mr McCreevy has sucked up to the business community big time. That is not to say that his pro-business gestures are ill-conceived. Expenditure on research and development should benefit from tax relief, the merits of the Business Expansion Scheme for small businesses are indisputable and film production provides worthwhile employment while enhancing the State's cultural development. The Minister's message is clear. It pays to lobby.
Would that the disadvantaged could lobby as effectively. The basic social welfare increases are bigger than in previous years, but are hardly generous. Yet again there is no increase in the child dependent allowance, little increase for school meals and increases in child benefit which are close to derisory. Heaven knows what difference Mr McCreevy thinks that €1.50 a week will make.
That decentralisation is a serious proposal is not in doubt but more than the cynical observers will wonder about the timing of the announcement. Neither do some details stand up to scrutiny. The €20 million seed-money is meaningless. The decentralisation will not be completed in anything like three years and the spreading of it is so thin as to raise doubts whether it will achieve the viable clusters that are desired. Moreover, the transfers must be effected on a voluntary basis but many senior public servants will not want to move.
The decentralisation issue usefully distracts from the fact that this is a boring, unimaginative budget. If the Government has a strategic plan for the State, it is not evident in this Budget. Rather it is an exercise in steady-as-she-goes while the coalition steers its way through the local and European elections. Mr McCreevy is rightly regarded as one of the more courageous, reforming finance ministers. This is a Budget which is prudent to the point of over-caution. Mr McCreevy has mislaid his radical touch.