In Politics by Numbers, broadcaster, author and spreadsheet stan Gavan Reilly takes a data deep dive into a political point of the week.     

LET’S BE REAL, you’d probably moved on from the budget, hadn’t you? The government would probably be secretly delighted if so: the modern test of a budget is whether it causes any massive public outcry. If the biggest controversy is over RTÉ’s missing €20 million – in which the stakeholder is a public body held in mediocre regard – then job done.

Last week’s column discussed how the budget speeches, for all their showbiz set pieces, are only the tip of the full budgetary experience given the slew of documents published alongside them.

In that sense, the approaches of the government, the media and the public are completely at odds – the public is still moulded to think of the budget news cycle as only kicking off on the actual Budget Day; the media now treats it as a weeks-long feeding frenzy that culminates on the day itself; meanwhile, the government is technically working on it for months, with economic forums in late spring and fiscal statements in summer.

Chambers’ public pay headache

While he tries to mend fences with the trade unions, Jack Chambers remains a bogeyman within the rest of Cabinet, over his strong-arming of funding allocations for 2027. Patrick O’Donovan blamed RTÉ’s shortfall equally on his own overall budget just as much as RTÉ’s pace of reform.

The counterpoint Chambers and supporters would offer is that the Cabinet agreed collectively, months ago, to limit next year’s increase in overall spending to 6%. Putting the brakes on runaway spending was not a solo run on Chambers’ part, but a collective Governmental decision – one that was made months ago, as far back as April when some of next year’s funding was reallocated to cover an underallocation for the Department of Education.

That rule of 6% caused ministers untold hardship in the last few weeks, as they tried in vain to........

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