If it seems like something from back in another lifetime, then it is very probably because we are talking about a distant “Budget land” that time has almost forgotten.

Budget day was a big news day – not quite up there with the All-Irelands, the Grand National, and the Eurovision Song Contest and such. But it was a big, popular talking point.

For most of us, it was about what did he – and it was and remains always he – do to the fags and the pint. What about the petrol and diesel?

We knew anything on PAYE would be at least half-clawed back via PRSI – until the decade-long Bertie Ahern boom years kicked in with more take-home pay as we also became mortgage-tax obsessed. Then came recession, which many of us found familiar.

More recently we found ourselves blinking back into the economic sunlight. Shortly after that we learned about the marathon horror that is Brexit.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe will unveil his ‘Brexit Budget’ for 2020 in precisely 10 days’ time, on Tuesday, October 8. He will do so more than slightly on the blind – but on the assumption that the UK political leaders’ infantile chaos will have done its worst and caused a no-deal crash-out Brexit.

Prudent Paschal is trying to tell us he can see around big European economic corners.

His boss, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, has yet again said there will be no “supplementary budget” next spring to deal with a no-deal Brexit.

Mr Varadkar first made these comments to this writer on December 14 last year after an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels. It was a time when it became clear that this Brexit carry-on was getting very sticky from everyone’s point of view.

The Taoiseach has clung to his obligation to put the bright side out. Things would get rocky but there would be no Brexit recession and no need for a mini budget as a result. In Los Angeles yesterday, he stuck to that line.

But the Government’s own think-tank, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), yesterday said the Government should consider a mini-budget in the new year to respond to Brexit. Mr Varadkar said the Government had decided on the “safer, more prudent course” – plans for the worst-case scenario and no-deal.

The Taoiseach insisted there would be no Brexit-driven mini-budget in the spring – despite what the policy wonks in the ESRI had to say.

The other side of the ESRI’s warning was that – magically if the evil Brexit day did not happen – there could be a resumption of normal consumer excesses, with the risk that we could be headed back to the a recent grim economic future. That one does annoy political leaders facing into a general election in the first half of next year amid a keen need to win votes.

So, the ESRI appears to be inadvertently delivering a lose-lose political diagnosis.

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