Heather is a a star today, but Emperor Leo usually strikes back

HAVING seen off a global pandemic – a little erratically, but generally successfully – the Coalition might have expected to find themselves basking in some degree of praise.

Instead, just three years into office they find themselves – whether they know it or not – in the last-chance saloon.

If they do go, it won’t be for the lack of willingness to spend taxpayers’ cash.

The country spent yesterday being, somewhat ungratefully, carpet-bombed with cash.

There is one all-defining problem though.

While it might be excessive to deploy the old ‘I love you, but I am not in love with you’ cliché, Paddy and Patricia Public were never in love with this lot. And they most assuredly are not in love with them now, which is why the Coalition have put so much effort into a final one-off throw of the political dice.

There has been much discussion of the longevity of Micheál Martin, and he certainly sometimes appears to have been around since the start of the Civil War.

But a certain unease is also growing over the escalating longevity of Leo Varadkar’s time in office. Once among the youngest leaders in the free world, the FG chief is starting to acquire the equivalent of a middle-aged spread. The sense suddenly is that he has been around for an awful long time – 11 years in Government and counting – talking a great deal and achieving very little.

Intriguingly this unease is unlikely to be calmed by yesterday’s Budget.

In politics, success is defined by your capacity to acquire cash for your department. Yesterday the big winner was Heather Humphreys. It took quite a while for the Minister for Public Expenditure to read through the €2.7billion of measures for the Social Protection Minister.

There were:

■ Additions to the weekly fuel allowance payment;

■ A lump sum payment of €400 to recipients of the fuel allowance;

■ A once-off double week cost-of-living support payment to all qualifying social protection recipients in October;

■ A second one-off Christmas bonus payment in December;

■ An additional lump sum of €500 to those in receipt of the working family payment in November;

■ A second November one- off double child benefit payment;

■ A payment of €500 to those who qualify for the carer’s support grant in November;

■ A once-off payment before Christmas of €200 to those in receipt of the living alone allowance;

■ A once-off payment of €500 to those people who qualify for disability allowance, invalidity pension and the blind pension in November.

Not normally one to be outflanked by his underlings, Mr Varadkar, by contrast, had more than a touch of the naked Emperor about him.

Technically, of course, Paschal is the Minister for Finance, but Leo certainly was not shy of grabbing the tax issue and annexing it for his own political space.

The result was a total taxcutting package of just over €1billion in a Budget where €10billion was available.

While Leo’s signature 30% tax rate did not make the grade, Paschal attempted to let his leader down gently, noting a great burst of ‘analysis’ will commence immediately and conclude prior to the publication of next year’s summer economic statement.

The good news according to Paschal is that ‘this analysis will assist the Government in arriving at an informed decision in a timely manner’.

The bad news for Leo is that Paschal warned complexities and changes to systems mean that this could be done for January 2024.

Given that Ireland had six tax rates during the age of pencil and paper in the Seventies, a suspicious person would wonder why this task is so difficult in the great age of information technology.

A suspicious person might also consider that the mandarins have decided they do not fancy this tax reform thing and that Leo is not capable of bending them to their will.

A cynic might even believe when it comes to tax reform the soon-to-be Teesh is all talk and no action. A logical person, meanwhile, would note that, in terms of the acquisition of cash, Ms Humphreys has seriously outshone her own leader.

That, of course, is a dangerous place to be for a minister prior to a reshuffle. She is not alone of course, for the Government as a whole are in a dangerous space.

The Coalition is residing in an uneasy ‘11 years, actually’ syndrome. This is a tad unfair to FF who have only been in power for three of those, but they are so tied to Fine Gael, the voters don’t differentiate.

As public unease grows, the Coalition blame Vladmir Putin for the energy crisis and all that flows from it. Of course he is – although the inability of Irish politicians to build renewable energy resources has played no small part too.

The current problem for our Coalition is that if antiinflation marches become the equivalent of the water charges uprising, the public won’t be looking for Mr Putin’s head. They will be looking a little closer to home.

It’s a very dangerous place to be for a minister