The budget briefings and leaks are now in full swing.
Another €8.5 billion or so is to be allocated in a few weeks’ time – and Ministers – like the Minister for Arts, Media and Culture Patrick O’Donovan – are looking to maximise their spending power.
Of course, much of this largesse is pre-committed and just running-to-stand-still money – but there is a fair bit of room for little passion projects.
For example, we learned over the weekend that O’Donovan wants the youngsters to get off their phones and out of the house.
Every 16-year-old in the State is to be given a €100 ‘culture voucher’ under plans being considered for the budget. The freebie will be available to spend on visits to arts, cultural and music venues next year, say reports.
The culture voucher is a popular notion, it appears. Fianna Fáil have trailed it in the past – as have Sinn Féin.
Another idea sent up the flagpole at the weekend was a potential tax break for childminders. The Minister for Finance, Simon Harris, voiced his support for the move while wrapping up a meeting of EU finance ministers at Dublin Castle.
But the budget talk didn’t end there.
He also said he wasn’t keen on abolishing stamp duty for first-time buyers – something the Taoiseach does seem to like. Boosting housing supply, said Harris, would be his department’s focus over the next fortnight.
Anyway, said the Tánaiste, the €1.5 billion earmarked for tax cuts will be going on credits and personal tax bands.
Not settled, however, is how to bring down the price of home heating oil. A VAT cut is not on the table, apparently.
Meanwhile, Minister for Housing James Browne is lobbying flat out to lift the tax refund for first-time buyers under the Help to Buy scheme to €50,000 – even though Harris and Micheál Martin have already tut-tutted the notion.
Again, Ministers find themselves in the lucky position of having a reasonably ample pot of riches to fight over.
German chancellor Friedrich Merz could only dream of such a benign economic scenario.
His Christian Democratic Union took a right thumping in the latest state elections over the weekend – as the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) again took the spoils. Merz’s crowd were projected to barely scrape above the 5 per cent threshold that would ensure parliamentary representation in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
“A disaster”, opined Merz – who has struggled to kick-start the German economy with an unpopular reform agenda. But he has vowed to stay on and do the necessary dirty work to turn the country around.
As for the surging popularity of AfD – it is unlikely to be running a regional government there as everybody else refuses to go along with it.
Merz will have the chance to forget about it all momentarily as he and other world leaders make their way to New York for the UN General Assembly.
With the planet in a fair state of chassis right now, there’ll be plenty to chin-wag about.
The Taoiseach and several Ministers will be there – with Martin due to deliver his speech to the assembly on Thursday evening.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee is meanwhile expected to highlight the plight of Afghan women and girls – and to be on hand to lay a wreath at the 9/11 memorial.
Minister for the Environment and Energy Darragh O’Brien along with junior ministers Neale Richmond and Timmy Dooley will also be in attendance.
The weekend saw more worries about an escalation of violence in the Gulf region – with Saudi Arabia and the Houthis trading blows. There is also talk about fresh US military action against Iran.
All of this, of course, means the price of diesel and petrol is now wild expensive. Even with the excise reductions of earlier this year still in place, a litre of diesel is well over €2 in most parts.
It was these sort of prices, lest it be forgotten, that put the spark under the farmer and haulier blockades of April – before the full array of measures were put in place. Just how the Government manages the current scenario in the absence of peace breaking out is a hard one to envisage.
Finally, as well as the German electoral intrigue of the weekend – there were also Russian elections over the past few days.
No problems there for the incumbent. Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party won well.
