In the Minister’s meeting room in the Department of Finance, there are portraits of all those who have headed the most powerful department of the government.
From Eoin MacNeill in the First Dáil and Michael Collins and Ernest Blythe to Charlie Haughey and Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen and Michael Noonan, they’re all lined up there, side by side, a mixed bunch for sure.
Charlie McCreevy, the Minister who rode the Celtic Tiger hardest, liked a bit of razzle dazzle on his budget days. In the days when the contents of budgets were more closely guarded, McCreevy didn’t just enjoy the theatrics of the big reveal on the big day, he believed it was an important part of communicating the budget to the public. His policy instincts tended to the radical, and there was more than a bit of the showman about him.
That is not, it is fair to say, the tao of Paschal Donohoe.
After n
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