The Irish Independent's View: With budgets, big numbers do nothing but bamboozle
Mathematics may be the language in which God wrote the universe, according to scientists, but back here on Earth, when you put so many zeros after a number you start to lose sight of the figure.
The Social Democrats' spokesman on public expenditure, Cian O'Callaghan, said the plan 'seeks to bamboozle with the budget to disguise the paucity of both commitments and detail'. In the end, people just want to know how many new houses will be built, how much money they will be left with in their pockets and how their hard-earned taxes will be spent.
Tracking how and where the money goes will be challenging, for most of the €275.4bn earmarked for the period 2026-2035 will go to government departments, rather than projects.
Precise detail of how it will be used is scant. Housing, long prioritised as the critical focus of the Coalition, has, unsurprisingly, come out on top – €36bn has been allocated to support building and infrastructure in the sector. The delivery of new homes is supposedly central to the plan, but again, how targets can be met is sketchy. Transport is to get €22.3bn, health €9.3bn, education €7.6bn and climate, environment and energy is next at €5.6bn.
The intention is still to address fundamental weakness or shortages that could impede economic development
Of course, the NDP is a framework for investment and subject to the vagaries of the economic cycle, but the intention is still to address fundamental weakness or shortages that could impede economic development.
As stated, chief among these is housing, but there is not enough substance in the plan to give confidence that dire needs can be satisfied, no matter how big the sums are.
The Summer Economic Statement was also published, and the talking point here was the tax break given on Vat to the hospitality industry.
Out of a package of €1.5bn in tax cuts, €1bn is to go to the sector, reducing Vat from 13.5pc to 9pc.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said when the Vat commitment was originally made that there would be 'trade-off and consequences'.
A giant Donald Trump-sized doubt hovers over all these projections, depending on how his tariffs play out. All governments must make choices. As Franklin D Roosevelt once said, they can and do err. But he quoted Dante, who believed divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. The government that lives 'in a spirit of charity' tends to fare better than one 'frozen in the ice of its own indifference'.
Only time can reveal how the scales are tipped for the Coalition.
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