Budget was as much about underpinning devolution as about the economy, writes Dan Keenan.
Devolution got off to a giddy start last May with the gobsmacked electorate taking its time to get used to a governing alliance of Sinn Féin and the DUP.
The few months since May 8th have seen more photo-opportunities than policies and what little hard politics there has been has been punctuated by serious-sounding spats among Ministers.
Yesterday, however, it finally got down to business.
The programme for government, an extensive legislative programme, should finally bring an end to talking-shop rhetoric that has dominated the Assembly's Bill-free proceedings since the summer recess.
However, the real tone for the rest of this term was set by the Robinson budget.
As Minister for Finance he has set Northern Ireland on a course he hopes will lead to private-sector growth, innovation, enterprise and exports.
If he were allowed by Gordon Brown, he would cut taxes - particularly corporation tax - thus confirming his economics as belonging firmly in the right-of-centre category.
Even though many of the billions he promises to spend are aimed at social inclusion, health and education, Mr Robinson is clearly no fan of the nanny state.
Although he doesn't say so directly, his attempt to foster many of the conditions that favour a Celtic Tiger-style boom illustrate some admiration for what has been achieved south of the Border over so short a time.
But it is the policy freedom which devolution offers that clearly excites him. The foreword to his statement makes that much clear.
The budget "marks a clear break from the days when direct rule ministers decided how much we should pay in local taxes and how the available resources should be spent. Instead we can now make our own decisions about our own priorities and decide how best to allocate resources accordingly," he said.
There speaks a man anxious not only to get his hands on power but to use it also.
Yesterday's announcements appear permeated with Robinson ideology - enterprise, investment, innovation and competitiveness, all of them buzz words of the political centre-right.
Yet for all that, this was a clever statement in that it managed to keep social democrats, liberals and nationalists happy. At least for now.
The four-party Executive signed off on the proposals unanimously on Tuesday. Only SDLP Minister Margaret Ritchie offered some questioning criticism of the allocation offered to her Social Development department in the early aftermath of the budget statement. For everyone else there was enough to keep them going - commitments to spending on health, education, care of the elderly.
For the environmentalists there were targets on emissions and renewables. For nationalists there was sufficient knee-bending in the direction of all-island co-operation and particularly in terms of roads infrastructure.
Union concern was raised by the Robinson drive to improve public-sector efficiency, but then the unions can hardly be seen to be advocates of public-sector inefficiency.
The Minister cleverly insisted that his ambition was not so much to cut the size of the ballooning public sector as to promote the scale of the wealth-creating private sector. There is an important difference there.
If anything, many of the Executive's pledges delivered yesterday seemed to err on the vague and aspirational side. There appeared to be relatively few specifics, as the floated proposal for a rapid transport system for Belfast shows.
But neither the Northern public nor, it seems, too many of their Assembly representatives, will worry too much about that for the moment.
Yesterday's budget, the first drafted locally since 2001, was about the Executive flexing its muscles.