Mr Nice Guy Paschal has shown his naughty streak

THE Government’s cheerleaders will hail the Budget on Tuesday as a triumph for the swashbuckling Taoiseach and his brainy Minister for Finance. And Leo Varadkar and Paschal Donohoe will be cast as a latter day Seán Lemass and TK Whitaker, although Batman and Robin may be more appropriate.

But the bumbling nerd Clark Kent emerged as Superman and Paschal Donohoe (the real tánaiste) is first reserve if Leo Varadkar is found to have feet of clay or suffers an unforeseen accident.

Come what may, Donohoe will deliver his first Budget as master of all he surveys in the Dáil – and the leader-in-waiting of Fine Gael.

It is a story where a kindly professorial family man climbs to the rung below the top of the greasy political pole. And he is unfailingly polite and helpful, a dutiful father and loving husband, diligent in his duties and has always been regarded as a paragon of political virtue – until last week.

It emerged that when he was minister for public expenditure, his officials buried an embarrassing story about an illegal allowance (€15,829) paid to then chief whip Regina Doherty.

When an enquiry about the illegal payment came into the department, Donohoe’s special adviser wrote a memo telling colleagues to ‘sit tight on this for now’ – and the information was withheld.

As ministerial sins go, it’s an offence on the same scale as ‘no bell on your bike’ – but it is the first known occasion that Paschal played politics to suppress the truth.

The loss of his political virginity will come as a relief to his own and other parties who believe a goodytwo-shoes has no place in high office.

Yet Donohoe has left more aggressive and less virtuous competitors far behind in his race to the top and fills the role model for ‘Mr Nice Guy’ in both Government and Fine Gael.

He also rose from a modest background to holding down a very senior and well-paid position as director of sales and marketing for multinational giant Proctor & Gamble. Donohoe made huge sacrifices to become a politician and earned his spurs taking on Bertie Ahern and Mary Lou McDonald in the cut-throat Dublin Central constituency.

Even the most embittered begrudgers accept that his meteoric rise from backbencher to Cabinet minister was hard-earned and well-deserved.

As minister for transport, he refused to be bullied and left it to the Workplace Relations Commission and Labour Court to sort out a Luas strike and a threatened walkout at Dublin Bus.

He kept a tidy desk and showed clean heels, moving seamlessly from minister for public expenditure to be the obvious successor to Michael Noonan as minister for finance.

First big question for a finance minister: can he say No?

Back in the 1980s, Ray MacSharry made his reputation as a great finance minister by his refusals to even his closest political friends.

Donohoe’s future depends on repeating the old maxim that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. He must quietly say No.

He has a natural affiliation with Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy and the Taoiseach, and they see themselves as a Fine Gael triumvirate for a new generation.

However, they may soon find that bar-stool wits will come up with a snappy name: The Three Amigos. ARE you thinking what I’m thinking about the EU?

Serving finger-wagging writs commanding the Irish Government to act as its debtcollectors from Apple was high handed and insulting.

It was also a coded message criticising our 12.5% corporation tax and ultimately it threatens our sovereignty.

The president of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, is leading the charge on Ireland’s low corporate tax rate. He was president of Luxembourg for 18 years, and on his watch sweetheart deals for multinational corporations were tweaked.

President Juncker ‘enjoys a drink’ and he is a spoofer who has taken up French President Emmanuel Macron’s clarion call for a United States of Europe with a harmonisation of taxes.

If they succeed, it will diminish Ireland’s competitive edge and consign us to be a quaint curiosity in the remote north Atlantic.

But then the EU is the be all and end all for the clique of handsomely rewarded and superannuated civil servants, embedded journalists and political enablers in Brussels.

In the shadow of Brexit and Trump, the EU is a bit like Churchill’s description of democracy – the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. ANOTHER Groundhog Day opinion poll in the Irish Times shows both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael firmly stuck where only one or other party can lead a government, with a smattering of independent opportunists. This standoff will keep either from running to the country – and does anybody believe this will change before the next election? US SECRETARY of state Rex Tillerson denied an MSNBC story that there was a rift between him and President Trump.

Speaking during the week, he didn’t refer to the alleged reason for the rift: widely circulated reports that he had called Trump a moron. MSNBC reporter Stephanie Ruhle subsequently clarified: ‘My source didn’t say Tillerson called Trump a “moron”. My source said he called Trump a “f***ing moron”.’