'Cooking the books': Is Budget 2026 a 'cynical wheeze'?

Yesterday’s budget spelled out the Government’s tax and spending plans for next year. But what happens after that?

Barra Roantee of Trinity College Dublin’s Department of Economics says it is “shocking” that there is no plan beyond 2026.

“Last year we had five-year-ahead forecasting. The year before was four-year. We’re meant to be submitting a medium term plan to the European Commission.

This is part of our obligations, and we were told that was going to happen over the summer. Then, it’ll happen near the budget. It still hasn’t happened, and we still have no detail. We don’t know what spending is meant to be in 2027, 2028”. 

He also highlights the lack of detailed costings to underpin our budgetary decisions.

“In the UK they’ll have hundreds of pages of costing documents for each policy decision and we have nothing. We have, like, a page”. 

Roantree is also highly critical of the way Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers have conveyed their decisions, including “astronomical spending increases” that end up being far higher, he says, than is claimed on Budget Day. 

“These costings are a cynical wheeze, innumerate, and they’re being used to, I think at this stage, cook the books”. 

On today’s podcast Rowntree talks to Hugh Linehan and Pat Leahy about Budget 2026. 

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