Brian Lenihan: Please Try This!

Dear Minister,

For the next few months, you and your officials in the Department of Finance will be engaged in several rounds of discussions with the other Government Departments in order to arrive at the 2010 Book of Estimates.

This process is known to some as the "Milk Round" but clearly there won't be so much cream this time...

I have an idea which might be of interest to you and which could, if implemented in some fashion, save this country from the very worst effects of the Budget you are currently planning this Winter.

The traditional procedure, as you know, is for Finance negotiators to tell sections of Departments that their budgets are going to be X% of last year's, and then following some haggling they agree some figure between X and 100%.

My idea is to instead walk in and say "Your budget is, as of this moment, exactly zero, and if you want any money from us you must construct a valid case for every million you seek."

This will, in almost all cases, result in a figure well below the X+ which would normally be arrived at, and will also force the recipients to concentrate their reduced budgets on the most vital areas of expenditure, rather than the usual "filling-out" which is normally necessary to spend out the previous years' allocation.

I spoke to Tom Kitt and Pat Rabbitte about this last evening, and they indicated that there's the kernel of something worth considering here. I explained to Deputy Kitt in particular that, in the face of the fact that Fianna Fail are doomed to lose every election in the forseeable future, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by adopting the most radical measures to rescue the country from the mess you've gotten it into.

It is possible, in my view, for some version of this approach to yield dramatic savings in Budget 2010, possibly of such magnitude that resources can be found to stimulate economic activity in the same Budget, as opposed to the otherwise inevitable drain which we all currently anticipate.

Yours Sincerely,

Fergal Byrne