Budget day is nothing but a ritualistic sham

One of the last remaining parliamentary dinosaurs will be on display in the Dail this afternoon. No, not the obvious suspects. The Budget. The great sham-drama of our parliamentary rituals.

The secrecy, the photo-opportunities, the briefcase or the computer disk, the adoring ministerial partner in the public gallery, the well-chosen tie, the interminable self-important speech, the fumbling and histrionic replies from the Opposition spokesmen and women, the endless divisions. And the media joining in the pretence that this is some great event.

Like so much else of the codology that litters our public life, we got it from the British and we became enraptured by it without wondering what it was about or why we needed it. Or course, the Government must present an annual budget, a projection of its income and expenses. But why has that exercise been invested with such silly pomposities and, worse, with such secrecy and rigidity?

Unless Charlie McCreevy makes another mess of it, the Budget will be rammed through the Dail tomorrow evening without ail any reasonable opportunity to tease it out or consider alternatives. For Government backbenchers the situation is worse. They will be required to vote for a Budget they will have had no hand, act or part in drafting and, barring another mess, they will have to support it whether they like it or not.

The justification for this was that the budget was so chock-full of financially sensitive material that a government could not possibly discuss openly, in advance, what it proposed and could not possibly leave the decision on budgetary policy to where it constitutionally resides, the Oireachtas.

But what financially sensitive stuff is there in the budget nowadays, apart from the imposition of excise duties on cigarettes, drink and petrol? Why should there not be open discussion and decision by the Dail on whether social welfare payments should increase by 5 per cent or 10 per cent? Or whether the top rate of income tax should remain at its present rate or be cut by two percentage points?

Isn't it for such matters that we elected TDs? What is the point of having them if decisions on how the national cake is distributed are taken without reference to them?

For the last week or so the Minister for Finance and some of his colleagues have been negotiating with the social partners, as the unions and the employers are called, about budgetary provisions. If it is OK to talk to them about it, why is it not OK to talk to elected public representatives about it, even members of the minister's own parliamentary party?

Indeed, last year the Minister's own Cabinet colleagues were kept in the dark about the budget until the very end, which is one of the reasons it was such a hames.

There is one great reason for all the secrecy and the pomp. It inflates the importance of the minister for finance hugely. All ministers lose the run of themselves not long after they are appointed to government, and ministers for finance get it really bad.

The budget is the big turn-on for them. Their job might be seen as pretty ordinary without the pomp and secrecy of budget day. To be fair to Charlie McCreevy, he has kept one foot on the ground - well, a toe - unlike several of his predecessors who floated off into the stratosphere.

All this is slightly amusing except for the distraction it creates from what matters. In today's Budget, it seems, at the instigation of Mary Harney the higher rate of tax will be reduced by two percentage points and the tax bands will be enlarged marginally. What conceivable justification is there for lowering the top rate of tax in preference to taking more people out of the top tax bracket?

Mary Harney's justification for reducing the top tax rate is that many people are paying too high a rate on relatively low incomes. But why not deal with that by taking people on relatively low incomes out of the top tax bracket?

Why is it that this evening the Dail will be presented with a take-it-or-leave-it option on the total budgetary package and will not be allowed to decide that it would be better to use available monies to broaden the tax bands further rather than lower the tax rate?

Why can there be Oireachtas committees to examine how monies have been spent when the horse has bolted, and no Oireachtas committee examining how monies will be spent, before the horse gets out of the stable? Why couldn't the budget be presented, say, in September, and then mulled over by an Oireachtas committee for three months, with outside experts and lobby groups before budgetary decisions are taken?

Of course, there are a few areas where announcement and implementation of decisions have to be simultaneous, such as excise duty increases. But outside those areas, what's the problem?

Such inquiry might focus on why it is that every budget introduced here in the last 10 years has favoured the rich. This includes the budgets introduced by Ruairi Quinn when he was minister for finance from 1994 to 1997. Would it not be interesting to examine what it is about Irish public policy that favours the rich at every hand's turn?

It might get us back to important matters like votes of no-confidence in Willie O'Dea and Ned O'Keeffe.