In just over two weeks, Michael Noonan will deliver the first budget of the new minority Government. It will be Noonan's sixth budget, a modest giveaway by the standards of these things.

There will be a few hundred million in tax cuts and several hundred million in spending on new spending on public services, this the preserve of his young apprentice, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe.

The two men will spend the coming days seeking agreement from their Cabinet colleagues, chiselling away at some of their demands, soothing them with compromises, tweaking and adjusting, promising and cajoling.

It is never so apparent as it is this time of the year just how much power in our system is wielded by the twin finance departments on Merrion Street.

In this process, as he has been since Fine Gael returned to power in 2011, Noonan will be the indispensable man, utterly central to the operations of Government and its success.

“Michael is the glue that is keeping the whole show together,” said one senior civil servant who is privately sceptical of the minority Government.

“He is constantly sorting out problems and getting over difficulties.”

There will be problems and difficulties aplenty in the fortnight to come, for sure.

For one thing, it is the first budget deal that Fine Gael will do with the Independents.

When the negotiations with the Independents on forming a government reached their decisive stage last May, it was Noonan who came to the table to make the deal.

I am the Minister for Finance, he told them, according to people involved in that lengthy process. I will write the budget. I will make sure that these things you want are in it.

Political fate

Noonan will play the same role in the days ahead. But he cannot do it forever. Though he could not admit it, this may be Noonan’s last budget.

His political fate is inextricably tied up with that of the Taoiseach. When Enda Kenny goes, Noonan will depart too, he has told people close to him.

But in truth the Fine Gael TDs who are looking beyond Kenny have that figured out already.

Sooner or later, regime change is coming in Fine Gael. Politics is an unsentimental business, and nobody knows that better than Noonan.

Like most men of his age, Noonan has slowed down in recent years. He is not, say people who have worked closely with him, as robust a presence as he once was.

Gossip around Leinster House often speculates on his health. He is 73 this year, and has experienced a number of health problems in recent years.

He was hospitalised last week for treatment for cellulitis, a painful skin condition whose effects were still visible when he appeared the Oireachtas Budget Committee last Tuesday.

He spent last Christmas in hospital having been diagnosed with a serious chest infection, and was diagnosed with sarcoma, a form of cancer, in 2014.

He underwent five weeks of radiotherapy followed by surgery, after which he was told the prognosis was good, with a low risk of recurrence.

In February of 2015, he underwent surgery for exophthalmos, a bulging of the eye. He had a heart bypass in 2007.

His officials are careful to mind him and manage his schedule; their memories of Noonan's predecessor Brian Lenihan, who died from pancreatic cancer a few months after leaving office, are still fresh and painful.

Not all ministers are liked by their civil servants, but Noonan is popular and respected.

Full diary

His diary is not as full as it once was, although he had a busy week with budget meetings, an appearance before an Oireachtas committee and a trip to London on Thursday to meet Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the exchequer.

But even so, people in Limerick were amazed when he missed the announcement of a new development company in the city on Monday, an event he had been previously scheduled to attend.

“It’s the sort of thing he would never ever have missed before,” said one local source.

“His fingerprints are all over the recovery in Limerick and this would be a signature event for him.”

His officials say that he was tied up in budget meetings at the department. “Budget matters were deemed more important than Limerick on this occasion,” his spokesman said.

“He’s very highly regarded, hugely respected,” says another Limerick political figure. “But I suppose he wouldn’t be the force he once was.”

It's difficult to overestimate the importance of the role Noonan played in the last government. With Labour public expenditure minister Brendan Howlin, Noonan formed the central axis of the coalition.

Their relationship was probably more important than the Taoiseach and either of his tánaistí.

"He had to normalise the freak show that was the Irish tax system. He had to follow Brian Lenihan's programme. He had little or no room for manoeuvre with the troika," says University of Limerick economist Stephen Kinsella.

"And he had to do a roadshow for Ireland. Nobody will give them the credit they deserve for that."

Perhaps his greatest skill has been his knowledge of how politics has to work with the administrative mechanics of government to achieve results.

Since he became Minister for Finance, he has picked civil servants as his special advisers and press officers, people who know the ways of the permanent government.

He has also talked politics to the economists and economics to the politicians.

“I’ll teach you a bit about politics,” he once said to Andrew McDowell, the Taoiseach’s now departed and hugely influential economic adviser. “And you teach me a bit about economics.”

Noonan was also central to negotiations with the troika. He networked furiously with European finance ministers to secure concessions, particularly the "Prom night" reprofiling of the Anglo Irish Bank promissory notes.

“He put the knife into [Greek finance minister Yannis] Varoufakis,” says another source. “They loved that.”

Fine Gael came into Government having suggested it would negotiate a new deal with Europe while privately having assured the troika that it would work within the confines of the programme already agreed with the previous Fianna Fáil government.

However, it soon became clear that any concessions for Ireland would be marginal, despite Noonan’s earlier insistence that a better deal was possible.

Walking tightrope

Sure, Noonan was walking a tightrope between the need to project confidence and stability and convey the sense that things would get better, while being in reality completely at the mercy of forces outside his control.

But the sense that Ireland was bullied by Europe took hold and continues to describe perhaps the principal dividing line in Irish politics today – was the bailout a rescue by friends or was it a grievous act of harm against Ireland?

Fine Gael – and Noonan – are at least partly responsible for the fact that many people believe the latter.

That is part of the story of the recovery too.

Politically, things started to go sour after the bailout exit in late 2013.

The coalition government never quite managed to define as clear a purpose for itself as when it was in the bailout.

And though Noonan implored Kenny to hold the election in the autumn of last year, he has shipped a good deal of blame for Fine Gael’s election result.

EU fiscal rules mean that Noonan and Donohoe will have less scope for manoeuvre in the budget than last year, when the outgoing Fine Gael-Labour government retrofitted a billion and a half euro into public spending budgets in a bid to answer voters’ demands for investment in public services before the election. As a political wheeze, if nothing else, it was spectacularly ineffective.

During the last government, Noonan had consciously cultivated a persona as the wise old owl of Fine Gael.

He was wildly popular with the party grassroots, who swooned over him as the Man Who Saved Ireland.

That reputation has taken a bit of a battering since the election. But he is still at the centre of it all, still the man who must make the deal.

At this week’s meeting of the budget committee, Noonan began in crusty and laboured tones.

Gradually, he warmed to his themes, and ended up lashing Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty for the past activities of the republican movement. He seemed to be enjoying himself at last.

As one committee member said afterwards, “He looked like he wanted to stay there all day.”