Government Ministers and advisers were racking their brains and thumbing their thesauruses this week looking for a synonym for the word "prudence". They needed to find a phrase or catchword which could most effectively characterise the Budget.
Not that there is anything inherently wrong with the word prudence; it's just that as a word to attach to budgets it has become hackneyed because it was so often used by the British chancellor, Gordon Brown. The word is also somewhat negative in its connotations and therefore doesn't sit well with current Irish political and economic realities. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen settled for describing the Estimates as "fiscally sustainable, economically appropriate and politically responsible". He will be using a lot of similar phrases to describe the Budget itself.
For Cowen getting the phrasemaking and message management right around this Budget is politically important. It has implications for the short-term electoral prospects of his party and for any long-term leadership ambitions he himself may have.
This Budget will set the tone for political discourse for the lead in to the election. There has been an almost eerie quiet around Leinster House in recent weeks. It is as though the intensity of the recent controversy about the payments to Bertie Ahern has sucked the air out of the political atmosphere. This should have been a Dáil term where the Government was really put under pressure. Instead the Opposition has been discommoded by Fianna Fáil's recovery in the polls.
Now all sides are focused on the Budget. The Government is confident that a good Budget will shore up its recovery. The Opposition parties are hopeful that some error might give them scope to reassert themselves. The more realistic among them are nervous that given the funds available to the Government the Budget is more likely to deliver a further fillip to Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats.
It is extremely unlikely there will be any slips in this Budget, not least because the Cowen budget-making process has been generally more open than that of his immediate predecessor. During the Charlie McCreevy years there was a sense that even the Taoiseach was not made aware of some of content of the budget speeches until budget morning itself. Cowen by comparison has usually trailed some of the details in advance.
As important politically is the fact that Cowen's budgets have been more left of centre, with tax changes, welfare increases and spending priorities targeted at those most in need. Everything Cowen has had to say in advance of this Budget indicates that it too will have a left-of-centre look.
The other political priority for the Government is to refute the suggestion that it is being reckless with the finances for electoral purposes. One of the reasons why this Government has, until recently, languished in the polls was because shortly after the 2002 election there developed, in the public mind, the impression that it had overplayed its hand on the economy and had ratcheted up expenditure to buy that election.
For months some media commentators and Opposition spokespersons have confidently predicted that another big-spending election Budget was on the cards again. This is not going to be the case. Cowen desires to be back in the Department of Finance after the election and he knows that cutting loose on the public finances would be politically counter-productive since it would arouse latent annoyance about the 2002 scenario.
The Government is also hoping that this Budget and the focus on Cowen as Minister for Finance will remind voters that it is not only in the head-to-head contest between alternative taoisigh that Fianna Fáil claims an advantage over Fine Gael and Labour. There are a number of senior Ministers who the party feels will stand up very well to comparison with likely Opposition alternatives. As well as his experience in four previous ministries, Cowen will soon have three budgets under his belt as Minister for Finance. Even Richard Bruton will struggle to avoid being unfavour-ably compared with Cowen during the election campaign.
Pat Rabbitte will have an even greater struggle in any such comparison. The none-too-subtle targeting of the Labour Party leader, which has been a feature of Fianna Fáil speeches of late, has in part derived from a belief that there is discomfort among some voters at the prospect of him being the next Minister for Finance.
Brian Cowen's reputation for competent economic management and for political judgment is likely to be enhanced further by this Budget. If Fianna Fáil is re-elected to government, then Cowen is likely to be one of the top three figures in that administration. He is also likely to lead such an administration into the latter part of its term. He has a lot at stake in the forthcoming weeks.