This is the first Budget I haven't been directly involved in for five years. This year, there won't be anyone visiting the bookies tomorrow to put down a fiver on what colour tie I'll wear to unveil the Budget.
Over each of the last five years, I spent the equivalent of a weekend putting in late hours in the office, finalising documents, and concluding the haggling with different ministers. It's an odd feature of the Budget process in Ireland that even though we're talking about a Budget package of more than €50bn, the fighting always comes down to the last €10m or so.
Last year, it was Kathleen Lynch who caused the last sleepless night before the Budget.
As we had done each of the previous years, we had ring-fenced the funding to develop mental health services in Ireland. But Leo Varadkar had decided to take this funding and spend it elsewhere in the health budget.
To be fair to Kathleen, she put her foot down, and made clear that she wouldn't appear to launch the health budget unless the mental health budget was restored. She got her way in the end.
When I read about Paschal Donohoe looking sleep-deprived but determined, it brings me back to last year and the years before. I have a lot of sympathy for Paschal, and I admire his determination to get the job done. I hope he gets a little sleep before launching the Budget tomorrow.
But that doesn't mean I agree with Fine Gael's overall approach.
Because of my experience over recent years, I decided Labour needed to do more than produce a pre-Budget submission. The type of document launched by Fianna Fáil last Friday is designed to appeal to swathes of different interest groups, without any costing or realistic ambition to achieve any meaningful change.
Labour's approach was different - we published a complete alternative Budget. We did this for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to show that a progressive and realistic Budget was possible within the available so-called fiscal space. And secondly, this Coalition is so chaotic, that we believed it was important to have a genuine alternative Budget available if the need arises.
With a small number of tax measures and an increased focus on capital spending, we were able to make the amount of money available for investment a little bigger.
Having done so, Joan Burton and Sean Sherlock spent the last few weeks looking at how we could make best use of this funding. It became clear the more we looked at it that spending a third of the available funding on a tax cut that would barely amount to the price of a cup of coffee each week was not good use of what is available.
We're not opposed to reducing the burden of taxation on low and middle income families. But we think any tax cut needs to deliver a real and tangible benefit to people. And so this year, we were honest - we said there isn't enough money available to do anything significant, and so it's not worth doing. In future years, we will propose tax reforms that will make a real difference to people. But this year we have proposed a step change in investment in public services - by making these investments, we can deliver something much more real to families across Ireland.
For example, we have proposed a universal, high-quality childcare scheme for all families with children under 12. We think staff working in early years care and education should be paid a living wage so that they can have sustainable careers and become the experts our children deserve. And costs for parents could be capped at €4.25 an hour, with that price falling by at least 50c a year over the next few years. Ireland spends about 0.1pc of GDP on early years care and education, compared with 0.8pc as the international average.
That's an area where more investment is clearly needed, and where the right investment could deliver massive savings to families.
Under Labour's alternative Budget, taxpayers would get free access to the dentist again: giving people the opportunity to get their teeth cleaned twice a year, to get fillings or other repairs done. We all know how expensive it can be to get an NCT on our teeth - it certainly costs more than a cup of coffee. So we allocated the funding to deliver a real and tangible saving to families.
This year, I'd put my money on Paschal wearing a blue or purple tie. But I won't be betting on Fine Gael delivering a fair, progressive or sensible Budget.
Brendan Howlin is leader of the Labour Party
Irish Independent
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