Time for your annual guide to the Real Budget.

Firstly, a quick note about all those budget kites flown in the media. For weeks now, the media has been full of stories about what may or may not be in the budget when it is jointly delivered by Simon Harris and Jack Chambers on Tuesday week. Some proposals are reported as faits accomplis; many optimistically so. Other Ministers are said to be “pushing hard” for their spending plans. God loves a trier.

This is all part of the game: Ministers or the people who work for them brief journalists to put pressure on the decision-makers – principally Harris, Chambers and the Taoiseach – to accede to their requests, even partially. Its record of success is patchy.

There is a parallel scramble among the Government parties to get credit for measures that will definitely be in the budget – tax cuts, energy supports, welfare increases, childcare subsidies, whatever. That will intensify next week as there is a greater degree of certainty about what is in and what isn’t.

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