The Government did not expect to have to face the voters in these circumstances. Tax cuts will be limited next year, unemployment will rise, a budget deficit is likely, spending on roads and railways will be less than planned and borrowing is again a possibility.
Meanwhile, the Opposition parties are lining up to hammer the Coalition over the state of the health services next year, branding them as an uncaring, out of touch Government.
Just when resources are needed to defuse a political issue, they are scarcer than at any time over the past five years.
So in his annual Government spending estimates, published yesterday, the Minister has cut current spending in a number of Government Departments and cut back capital planned spending on the National Development Plan to concentrate resources on the politically sensitive areas of health and education.
The move may not reflect Mr McCreevy's own instincts. The commitment to spend an additional €800 million (£630 million) on health, a 14 per cent rise on last year, comes despite his belief, repeated yesterday, that increased health spending vanishes into a black hole without necessarily improving services.
But the electoral imperative has won out. The Government will face the people with a 14 per cent increase in health spending in one hand and its long awaited health strategy - to be published next week - in the other.
If the issue won't go away, then the Government is planning at least to be seen to address the issues.
But the price to be paid includes spending on roads, railways and other infrastructure projects.
Documents published on budget day last year and submitted to Brussels indicated some £4.6 billion would be spent on the National Development Plan in 2002.
Yesterday's estimates suggest that figure will now be below £4 billion. The change will inspire fears that the long promised transformation of the country's transport links, airports, ports, sewerage and water systems will now be a more long term, piecemeal affair.
With the boom over, will the long expected development of public transport and other services to the highest EU standards now ever happen?
It is not possible to rush to judgement yet. Mr McCreevy held out the prospect of further spending on infrastructure in his budget in three weeks time. How much, he said, would depend on "other priorities".
His comments left no doubt that the National Development Plan currently takes second place to increasing current spending on health and education.
The Opposition was quick to highlight the change, with Labour's Mr Derek McDowell maintaining the National Development Plan had effectively been "shelved".
The 5 per cent increase in capital spending was "less than a quarter of what has been typical under this Government", he said.
Fine Gael's Mr Jim Mitchell said the National Development Plan was already a year behind schedule and the small increase in capital spending for next year would make matters worse.
Mr McCreevy had "squandered money in the years of enormous growth" leaving himself with no latitude to meet the current downturn.
But while the Opposition concentrated on the slowdown in the National Development Plan, the Government's message yesterday was about health.
However it was clear, not for the first time, that the message from Mr McCreevy and other Ministers was somewhat different. The annual publication of the estimates in recent years has been the occasion for Mr McCreevy's candid reflections on health spending.
Yesterday he remarked that there were three certainties in life: death, taxes, and that health spending would rise.
He mused again yesterday on what he sees as the insatiable appetite of the health services for money. He pointed to the extra 21,000 people working in the health services now compared to 1997, and said spending on health had quadrupled since 1992.
This was despite the fact that "we have the youngest population in Europe, so we should be a little fitter and less sick than the others."
The taxpayers should be getting a greater return from the additional investment, he said. Reform of structures and procedures was needed.
He is unlikely to have pleased the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, yesterday by suggesting that the health strategy - seen by some Government strategists as the major political event between now and the election - would not be particularly noteworthy.
As the Department of Health this week puts the finishing touches to what will be the biggest policy launch in years, Mr McCreevy remarked that "there will not be whole new instantaneous programmes".
Most of the measures "are continuations and expansions of existing programmes", he declared. And while the strategy would "imply additional resources over the next decade", most of these resources would have been committed anyway. It would, however, propose "structural changes" but change would not come overnight.
"There are very many vested interests in the health area with terrible clout", he remarked.
But this frank assessment does not help the Government get over its immediate problem of how to change the public perception of its performance on the health services.
The Coalition hopes that increasing spending and launching a health strategy will defuse the issue in advance of the election.
Not many Ministers are expected to come out and join Mr McCreevy in suggesting that such moves are of limited value.
Other weak spots in the Government's image were also addressed yesterday.
Increases in education spending are targeted particularly at children with special needs in the wake of the Mr Jamie Sinnott case.
Primary and secondary school education gets an 11 per cent rise while third level gets a 15 per cent increase.
However, the estimated spending on special needs assistants in national schools goes up by 69 per cent.
Other areas are considerably less fortunate. Current spending on the Garda will rise by just four per cent with capital spending down 16 per cent.
Many departments will see their current spending slashed including Agriculture (down 15 per cent), Marine (2 per cent) Tourism and Sport (1 per cent), Defence (4 per cent), Taoiseach (2 per cent) and Finance (12 per cent).
However the projected spending increase announced on estimates day has become largely a fiction.
Last year, for example, the Minister said on publication of the Estimates that spending would rise by 13 per cent, only for that figure to rise to 21 per cent on budget day.
He said yesterday that some departments were clamouring for more money, and made it clear that the real shape of Government spending for 2002 will not be known until the December 7th budget.
The decisions to be taken in the next three weeks, and how they are presented, are perhaps the most important they will face before going to the people.
Mark Brennock is Political Correspondent of The Irish Times