You’d be best to ignore most of the debate on the budget. The performative nature of it all would wear you out. The Minister for Finance riding to the rescue of people who are “getting up early or staying in work late”. Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty dismissing it as an “an insult to workers”. The trade unions calling it as a “halfhearted apology” for last October’s decision not to have an income tax package and not enough to get them to call off industrial action. You could have written it all beforehand.

What is the reality? Perhaps the most interesting assessment came from the researchers at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). The headline is that the budget tax and welfare changes more or less made up for expected inflation next year, with slightly bigger gains for some less well-off sections of the community. In other words, Budget 2027 was neither a triumph nor a disaster for living standards.

The basis for this falls into the basket of a bit wonky but nonetheless important. The ESRI looks at inflation and expected wage increases next year and asks what the budget will mean to a sample section of the population. Its conclusion is that spending power will more or less mark time for most groups. In other words, if you get a 4 per cent pay rise, then the budget does enough to ensure tax does not take a bit more of your income. And people on welfare have been broadly insulated from higher inflation – some of the basic increases were on the low side, while some specifics like the extra disability allowance helped.

Nor is this unusual. The ESRI’s assessment is that this has generally been the case over the last seven budgets. Tax and........

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