The noise is building in advance of October’s budget. Next week’s Summer Economic Statement will raise the sound level further, signalling that €9 billion to €10 billion is “available” for spending increases and tax cuts.

Ministers love these big numbers, but politically they are toxic, fuelling demands from right, left and centre. The conundrum of Irish budgeting is that a lot of this money is already committed to various spending programmes – the key budget decisions will centre around a tax and welfare package of €3 billion to €4 billion, with a few additional add-ons for other departments.

That is a limited amount in a budget of €100 billion plus. So my first prediction is that this will be one of the most fractious budget negotiations we have seen in recent years. There is already position taking – Minister for Finance Simon Harris has spoken repeatedly about income tax cuts. He told the Dáil recently – in an advance on Leo Varadkar’s focus on those who get up “early in the morning” that there are those “who got up at a ridiculous hour in the morning, sit in horrific commuter traffic and are looking for a bit of a break too”. The Fianna Fáil side is also supporting income tax reductions, though whether it is signed up to the Harris plan is questionable.

Harris will argue for a rise in the share of budget cash put aside for tax cuts, but this will leave less elsewhere. And the strained relations between the two big parties will make the negotiations all the harder. By mid-September, this could all get quite fraught.

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