The most important thing is that it was done, in the end.
This is a Government that has had its future threatened in recent months by a pointless (because it was unconstitutional) Opposition Bill on abortion, the Apple tax decision and a row over cardiac services at Waterford hospital.
It was not a given that it could agree a budget, often the trickiest political balancing act of the year.
If the inherent instability that comes from its unique composition and parliamentary situation is a fact of this Government, then just as important is that its three components – Fine Gael, the Independents in government and the extramural element in Fianna Fáil – have judged it to be in their political interest to stick together for the medium term at least.
None wants an election; all needed to do a budget.
They needed to demonstrate to themselves as much as to the outside world that they could do it.
The exercise of agreeing and now defending their budget will bind the administration closer.
The Government will become more coherent. But to what end?
The budget they produced yesterday had been heavily flagged in advance, with measures such as general social welfare increases, a new payment for childcare, help for first-time buyers, cuts to USC and inheritance tax and money to hire more gardaí, teachers and nurses either announced previously or leaked in recent days and weeks.
What was immediately noticeable was that the package was bigger than had been anticipated.
The fiscal space available for the budget-day package expanded by 20 per cent, or some €200 million, in recent weeks.
Capital spending
There are increases in capital spending spread over a number of years, and there will be supplementary estimates later in the year for capital requirements in transport and the Christmas bonus for welfare recipients.
Added to the previously announced spending increases, chairman of the Fiscal Advisory Council John McHale estimates that the total budgetary package, between spending increases and tax cuts, is some €3 billion bigger than last year.
Prof McHale had previously described the Government’s (then smaller) budget plans as “at the limit of prudent policies”.
The council will make its report on the budget in several weeks, but it seems likely to view the actual budget to be outside the limits of prudent policies.
Prof McHale has said the size of the package was “a matter of concern”.
Although gardaí, nurses, many teachers and other public servants are seeking immediate pay increases, there is no provision in next year’s estimates for anything beyond those contained in the Lansdowne Road Agreement, which will cost just under €300 million.
However, total spending on public sector pay will rise by €660 million, as almost 7,000 more public servants are hired.
During the years of austerity, the number of public servants fell sharply. They are now on the way up.
Some of this increase – recruiting teachers because we have more schoolchildren – is driven by demographics. But not all of it; some of it is just driven by political pressure.
And this is the other most conspicuous aspect of Budget 2017 – the extent to which the Government demonstrated its receptiveness to political pressure.
The expansion of the budget in recent days was facilitated by changes in the way Government finances are calculated, but it was driven by politics.
Looked at as an exercise in economic and fiscal management, the concentration on the budget is wildly disproportionate, as many commentators have noted.
We obsess over how Michael Noonan and Paschal Donohoe will spend the extra billion euro while paying scant attention to how they spend the other €55 billion. And that's true insofar as it goes, but to leave it at that is to misunderstand the political role of the budget as the primary means of expression of a government's will, its character, its estimation of its own capacity.
This budget is politically reactive, seeking to reflect the public mood and meet the demands of interest groups rather than proactively set out an economic and political direction for the coming years.
Pressing needs
Its signal policy departures such as the childcare and first-time buyers’ initiatives are efforts to deal with pressing needs in society, but they sit beside the political imperative to give something to everyone in the audience.
Many measures were driven by the fear of not doing them.
Although resources are becoming available to this Government, its will is dissipated, its capacity compromised.
Although it achieved a milestone on the day, such a government will find future budgets even more difficult.