Opinion: Budget 2023 could be an election budget

In 1995, Phil Hogan had to resign from his position as minister of state having leaked details of the budget.

At the time, there was a three-way coalition of Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left. The Government was leaking like an old timber trailer transporting sand, and Hogan was the one caught out.

Nowadays, the budget is announced the day before the finance minister stands on his feet to make his keynote speech. It’s making the set piece of budget day a farce.

Every possible detail was revealed across news websites on Monday evening, and in our national newspapers on Tuesday morning. This is only happening because the Government is sharing the budget in its entirety. It’s like the All-Stars awards, except they only announce one team in advance, and keep the others back to create a little suspense and intrigue.

Why is this happening? And does it really matter? The second question is actually more important. For me, it does matter, for a whole load of reasons.

Firstly, it suggests that trust within the cabinet isn’t what it needs to be in these straitened and dangerous times.

The budget speech is the main political set piece in the Irish political calendar. So If the Government can’t keep the details of the budget to themselves until the Minister for Finance stands up to address the Dáil, how can they be trusted to keep anything to themselves.

Like in 1995, we have a three-way coalition. And like then, the largest party in the Dáil is in opposition.

Back then, Fianna Fáil was well ahead in the polls, and Fine Gael and Labour were vying for second place while sharing power in Government. Labour had its best-ever electoral performance in the Spring tide 1992 election, and only went into coalition with Fine Gael after its partnership with Fianna Fáil collapsed after only two years, falling over (get ready for this if you’re under 50) the delay in processing the extradition of a paedophile priest to Northern Ireland.

Rather than a general election, we witnessed the formation of the first three-way coalition since the 1940s.

Fine Gael was hostile to a “rainbow” coalition in 1992, but agreed to share power with not just Fine Gael, but also Democratic Left.

That Government lasted until 1997, but Phil Hogan was an early casualty as all sides watched each other closely.

Irreconcilable evidence

The previous Government had ultimately fallen over the Beef Tribunal, where the testimonies of Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and Progressive Democrats leader Des O’Malley were effectively irreconcilable.

The two had been cabinet and party colleagues in Fianna Fáil in the early 1980s.

I vividly remember Albert Reynolds addressing the 1992 Macra rally in Ennis in late 1992, as the Government was falling apart.

When the coalition between the PDs and Fianna Fail was brokered between former mortal enemies Charlie Haughey and Des O Malley in 1989, Reynolds had described it as “a temporary little arrangement”.

Fianna Fáil felt that single-party government was both a stronger form of government and also only within the reach of its party.

In the three decades since, we have become used to coalition as the default form of government.

No political party has been within an ass’s roar of an overall majority in recent elections.

But now, we have Sinn Féin consistently rising in the polls, and clearly heading to be comfortably the largest party in the next Dáil.

It’s uncharted territory, with the two parties that have dominated electoral politics and anchored every Government in the 100 years of the State’s history the current uneasy bedfellows in power.

Perhaps that’s why journalists were briefed of almost every detail of the budget in advance. Government ministers building bridges with political reporters by spilling the beans.

The Green Party ministers are no more likely to have clean hands than the cabinet representatives of either of the other two parties. It’s all very unseemly.

In fairness to the Minister for Agriculture, he had fewer secrets to keep than most.

In terms of farming, Budget 2023 was mostly concerned with the new CAP, and all that detail has been in the public domain for the best part of a year now.

It must have been a sobering moment for Charlie McConalogue, Pippa Hackett, Martin Heydon and the senior people in the Department to have The Irish Times political reporters revealing the detail of the agri budget on Monday evening. The cabinet wouldn’t hold water at the minute.

When you combine that reality with the knowledge that the maths for the Government are pretty difficult, the nature of the budget becomes more understandable.

The focus was on households, and it’s hard to criticise that. We can all see the pressures on households from surging energy and fuel bills.

So we can add the €11bn “giveaway” budget to the complicated Government maths and the leaking cabinet which suggests internal trust is fragile.

It all points to an election sometime between the new year and Budget 2024.

Ard Fheis

With all that in mind, Saturday’s Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis could well be the last get-together for the party faithful before they are asked to canvass for votes in a national election.

Charlie McConalogue opted for a message of positivity, highlighting how far Irish food’s footprint now travels.

The main policy platform announcement was that the search for a CEO to head up the new Office for Fairness and Transparency in the Agri-Food Supply Chain (the acronym OFTAFSC could do with a little work).

McConalogue was pretty forceful as to the teeth the appointee will have.

“I want those who are breaking the unfair trading practices to be afraid of the office,” he said. “It will shine a light on the sector. It will have real teeth. It will protect our farm families.” Meat Industry Ireland must be quaking in their boots.

In fairness to the minister, he seems set to deliver on a promise made by a number of his predecessors.

One of the first political speeches I reported on for this publication was in relation to proposals to put forward legislation on transparency in the food chain.

The minister in question was Mary Coughlan, and the Celtic Tiger was roaring, for it was 2007. Fifteen years later, as her fellow Donegal native promises to do what she, Brendan Smith, Simon Coveney, Michael Creed, Barry Cowen and Dara Calleary failed to do, he also announced that Coughlan will end her exile from public life by chairing a committee that will work to encourage more women into agriculture, also recognising the key role women play on the family farm.

It's a long road with no turning.