I must confess that I’m not really one for the annual Budget frenzy. I know that other economists – some of whom good friends of mine – count down the sleeps to Budget Day. But that’s not for me. There are probably two main reasons why. First, I don’t think annual government budgets should be sprung as a surprise. Some readers may remember, during the Troika process, a proposed Irish budget measure was being discussed by Germany parliamentarians. The idea that German lawmakers could have input or even just oversight of the budgetary possibilities, while their Irish counterparts had to…