No one was happier than Charlie McCreevy when he became the first minister for finance to have delivered five budgets in a row.
People with more sense - and a less flattering view of McCreevy's importance - look at the cumulative effect of the five budgets and are not so impressed. Those with a sceptical view of strokery and a more developed sense of justice examine this week's offering and are outraged.
McCreevy had been expected to borrow for the first time since his arrival in Finance in 1997. But, to the delight of his backbenchers and the great surprise of the Opposition, he hadn't borrowed a bob.
The Coalition's supporters were as pleased as they'd been last year when he announced that the budget he was about to deliver was the fourth in a series of five.
On Wednesday, while they showed every sign of delight, indeed triumph, many on the back benches may have been relieved that this was McCreevy's final budget, not the fifth of six. The judgments of the Opposition were too close to the mark for the comfort of any but the most short-sighted member of Fianna Fβil or the Progressive Democrats.
Michael Noonan and Jim Mitchell described McCreevy's use of money from the Social Insurance Fund and some of the Central Bank's profits on the change to the euro as voodoo economics. Noonan said the raid on the Social Insurance Fund was improper, illegal and outrageous.
Ruair∅ Quinn claimed that he'd never seen such a blatant attempt to buy votes - well, not since last year - and Labour's spokesman on finance, Derek McDowell, spoke quietly but persuasively of a lie, a fraud and a disgrace.
The chorus of hard chaws on Today FM didn't see it that way. They thought McCreevy would go down as one of the few finance ministers who had lived up to his convictions, especially in his campaign to cut corporation taxes. Eamon Dunphy and Shane Ross compared notes on his performance in the Dail. Ross found him "glorious in his perversity". But it was Willie O'Dea who mounted the true Fianna Fβil defence when, later that night, he took on Alan Dukes, Pat Rabbitte and Vincent Browne on Radio 1.
O'Dea wasn't remotely put out by Dukes's demolition of a Budget built on shifting sands or the arguments raised by Rabbitte and Browne about the use of funds which, in a few months' time, may be sorely needed in worsening trade.
"I can't anticipate what's going to happen this time 12 months," wailed Willie. (But that, of course, was the reason for the existence of a social insurance fund to which workers contributed and from which they might gain some relief if the worst came to the worst.)
As John McManus explained in our Budget supplement on Thursday: "The small size of the Exchequer surplus forecast for next year means that even a small economic shock could force the Government finances into the red." And Dukes forecast: "The next minister is going to have the father and mother of a headache." All that seemed to matter to McCreevy's camp followers was that their boy had done it again. The Minister, as he'd been from the word go, elected - under the Payback brand - to make this a more unequal place. What you see is what you get. It does what it says on the tin.
Or, to be more precise, McCreevy cuts taxes. Redistributes wealth in favour of the wealthy. Revels in the survival of the fittest and laughs in the faces of left-wing pinkos and the poverty industry.
And it's not just McCreevy who'd prefer to spend our money looking after the racing industry than to issue medical cards to those who can't afford to be without them. It's the Government, with its plamβs and palaver and promises of fair play tomorrow.
CORI's analysis and critique of the Budget runs to 24 pages under the heading: "Five in a Row - Prosperity Without Fairness." It begins: "As a direct result of the choices contained in Budget 2002: the number of people living in relative income poverty will continue to rise; the rich-poor gap will continue to widen; many people in low-paid jobs will gain nothing; families on very low incomes will not have a right to a medical card; large numbers of people will continue to wait for appropriate accommodation."
The commentary responds to McCreevy's claim that "this Government has done more than any other in the history of the State to promote social inclusion."
It's the kind of sentence that trips lightly from a speech-writer's pen or a politician's tongue. But it's not true, as its treatment of the review of the National Anti-Poverty Strategy shows: "Promised in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, this review has been ongoing for almost a year. Seven working groups completed their work several months ago. Yet the Government has not published the long-awaited review.
"If this Government wishes to be seen as a Government of social inclusion, then it should publish this review and include a global target to benchmark the lowest social welfare payments at 30 per cent of gross average industrial earnings by 2007."
dwalsh@irish-times.ie