The re-election auction has begun

Bear in mind the mentality of some of the current FG and Lab ministers. The FG/Lab/DL 'rainbow' of 1994-1997 kept to a policy of moderate cuts in tax and higher spending in key areas as economic growth permitted. They met all the Maastricht convergence criteria for EMU and so allowed the Central Bank of Ireland to keep cutting interest rates. It was sometimes incoherent (e.g. fiscal policy of budgetary constraints with a monetary policy that was pumping credit into the economy) but broadly was the right approach to take. They were trounced at the election by a Bertie-controlled FF, which proceeded to create a ridiculous inflationary boom with tax cuts that couldn't overcome the structural constraints of the economy (e.g. poor infrastructure, inadequate labour market activation measures etc etc) and that just saw the money frittered away on higher prices. Those same FG and Lab deputies are still scarred re the legends of what might have been, 1997-2002. Expect auction politics from their old guard.
The political culture of Ireland is somewhat like that of 1980s Somalia, e.g. the various henchmen loot and plunder everything for their own clansmen. It has always been thus: FG/Lab decry FF's decentralisation policy as an abandonment of spatial planning, but you could find a loot/plunder 'delivering for my constituents' vibe to a considerable amount of decisions made by any Government minister in any decade, e.g. FF would criticise FG's Lindsay Gaeltacht areas of the 1950s, in which large swathes of politically important territory were to be redesignated as Gaeltacht in order to harvest public money.
The most interesting element to the auction politics would be to see what SF have to offer FF or FG as a red line negotiating position, as at present much of SF policies are oriented towards stopping the various Socialist or Socialist Worker groups on the far left, but it's a curious sort of 'left' wing policy that involves opposition to taxes on unearned income (e.g. property taxes) etc.
The public will largely vote for the looting, marauding clansman, but if the public services are run like unresponsive colonial administrations (e.g. the HSE) then the humanising element sometimes does entail a Minister loading up the caravan with booty, (e.g. Reilly and north county Dublin when as health minister). I'd be more worried when I hear of Ministerial advisers talk of 'Year 1' issues versus 'Year 4' issues, i.e. they won't even pretend to govern for the country's long-term interests but instead everything is restricted to the current electoral cycle.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Would there be anyone who would vote for the government if they specifically decided not to have a give away budget, but instead promised to keep working on balancing the books, getting Ireland back into the black and continuing to reduce the deficit in circumstances where we have curiously high growth (suggestive of another potential bubble)?

That's who I'd like to vote for.

you need a liberal party for that, not socialists and conservatives