Behind the Budget profiles

No doubt you read last Thursday's Budget '98 supplement in this newspaper to see how well you have been rewarded by Charlie McCreevy. Like many people I turned to the various profiles of the unemployed (Paul and Jane), the returning emigrants (John and Miriam), the company director and wife (Brendan and Annette), the widowed pensioner (Madeleine), the single parent (Siobhan) and the professional couple (Clive and Mary).

Some people think these are imaginary case studies concocted to help readers with their own situations. But The Irish Times does not deal in fiction. So on opening Thursday's paper, I recognised my old friends Clive and Mary straight off.

Clive and Mary, you may recall, are the couple earning close to £100,000. In their late 30s, "they live together, but are not married and have no children." They "are keen wine-drinkers, often buying by the crate" and so on. I rang my friends to offer my congratulations on their newspaper appearance, not to mention the extra £1,846 per annum they would now have to play around with. They live in Blackrock, not too far from Cross Avenue, and invited me out to talk to them.

Clive and Mary were not at all happy with the profile. Mary had a particularly long list of complaints. In the first place, the profile revealed that Clive's car cost £22,000 "but neglected to point out it was a BMW." Worse, everybody knew that the BMW 5 Series started at over £30,000, so it was embarrassingly obvious that Clive was still at middle-management level with his entry-level 3 Series. Clive, who was enjoying one of his after-dinner cigars at 11.30 in the morning, and had not yet got a word in, now alleged that despite Mary's occupation as a senior banking executive, the word "budget" did not exist in her vocabulary. He then suggested that the really keen wine-drinker in the house was Mary, and that she was not only a keen wine-drinker, with a marked preference for 1.5-litre bottles of Lambrusco, but also a keen gin, vodka, Bailey's Cream, Tequila Sunrise and Graham's Late Bottled Vintage port drinker.

"And about this business in The Irish Times of us having no children" Clive stated bluntly: `It isn't my fault."

Mary burst into tears and had to be consoled with a large Gordon's. "If Clive did more mileage he could earn a reduction in the car benefit-in-kind charge" she cried, somewhat confusingly, I thought.

Clive was silent, drawing on his cigar. "Not only that", sobbed Mary, "but he knows that taxpayers with children will gain from the increases in child benefits - up from £30 to £31.50 for each of the first two children and from £39 to £42 for subsequent children. Think what this could mean to us!"

Clive got up. "Perhaps you might be more suited to life as a single parent" he said, rather brutally - "though I trust you realise there is still no tax relief for childcare."

I now found myself drawn into a horrifying series of personal revelations. It seemed that Clive had recently taken up with the attractive widow, Madeleine, whom he met when the Irish Times case profiles were being compiled. Mary was outraged that Clive had become involved with an older woman, but Clive countered that as an old age pensioner, Madeleine now had an extra £5 a week, free phone rental and increased tax allowances. Further, her children were grown and she had no dependants.

As a businesswoman Mary was forced to recognise Madeleine's attractions. She herself seemed on a rather weak wicket when admitting to a recent liaison with company director Brendan. While Mary claimed to be attracted by his generosity to various charities, Clive cruelly suggested the attraction lay more in Brendan's BES relief of £10,000: "Anyway", Clive pointed out, "that fellow's charitable donations are predicated on the notion of tax relief."

Now Mary is talking to the returned emigrant couple, John and Miriam, about a possible move to the UK, and has also had a long talk with the single parent, Siobhan, who has become a close friend, and by some accounts an even closer friend of John: the latter has of course just returned to a £25,000 job in Ireland, and finds himself tiring of the all-too-domesticated Miriam and the two toddlers, notwithstanding the £1.50 increase in their child benefit allowances.

Meanwhile, weary of professional pressures, Clive is now joining forces with Paul and Jane, the unemployed couple, and plans to go into business with Paul importing cheap second-hand cars from Northern Ireland, gambling on the hope that Vehicle Registration Tax will fall further. Jane, however, sick of being unemployed and tired of Paul's endless schemes, has her eyes not only on the comfortably-off Clive but on Clive's capital gains allowance and the preferential bank mortgage which unfortunately from her point of view is in Mary's name. All are currently in the throes of financial counselling.