Budget day used to bring them in their droves to the public gallery of the Dail to hear how the Minister for Finance had divided up the cake for the year ahead.
Then, every word and gesture was followed by an expectant , today's budgets are a more lacklustre and predictable affair. However, the present Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, has shown he is as likely to surprise as some of his predecessors in an age not given to budget nuggets.
Mr John McGilligan, son of a former Minister for Finance, Mr Patrick McGilligan (1948-1951), who has been watching the annual ritual of the Budget speech for 40 years, says Budget Day is not as exciting as it used to be, and "there are fewer gasps from the gallery". "Going back 15 years or more, the budget was a real hold-your-breath surprise, with no indication in advance whether it was going to be expansionary or deflationary. The minister just walked in and you really didn't have a clue. It was a hugely precious secret and there were few leaks in those days."
This drama has been replaced in recent times by the predictable, he says, as various pre-Budget publications, such as the Estimates, inform the public of what the Minister can or cannot do.
"It is [now] pretty well sign-posted within two or three weeks of the budget and people can put all those things together and have a fair idea of what the overall thrust of the budget is going to be."
The average tenure of a minister for finance has been around four year apart, that is, from exceptions such as Mr Ernest Blythe (1922-32) and Mr Sean MacEntee (1932-39 and 195154), who both served for more than 10 years, and Mr Jim Ryan, who served in finance for six years, says Mr McGilligan, a career merchant banker and chairman of Equity Bank.
While for the most part, the budgets he has watched have been "unremarkable", some ministers stand out for their confidence and their ability to put their own stamp on their presentations. He feels "Bertie Ahern's first two budgets were written by civil servants", but, by his third, "Mr Ahern began to put his own mark on it".
Mr George Colley (1970-73 and 1977-79), Mr Charles Haughey (1966-70), Mr Alan Dukes (1982-86) and Mr Ruairi Quinn (1994-97) were all very much on top of their brief and in control, he says, and they gave the impression that their budgets had their stamp on them. While it might be to early to say, it appears Mr McCreevy is definitely his own man, he adds.
"It came across that these Ministers had their own agenda and they took no nonsense from anybody," Mr McGilligan says.
"The most dramatic budget," he recalls, "in terms of gasps in the gallery and people not expecting things", was Mr Colley's implementation of the manifesto programme (1978), which got Fianna Fail back in power in 1977.
"It was really implementing what they called a Dutch auction," he says. "The other clearly dramatic budget was Ray MacSharry's (1987-88) budget in 1988," he says.
"Mr MacSharry came in and wielded the knife and there were severe cuts in government departments of health, education and an absence of the usual raises in social welfare."
Mr Dukes's budgets were longwinded and went into immense detail while Mr Quinn was impressive for his quick command of the brief and was totally on top of the job.
Mr McCreevy's enjoyment of the occasion is marked by his tendency to do something surprising in his budgets - as we may find out again later today.
The 2000 Budget will be covered live on The Irish Times on the Web at www.ireland.com, including details of the measures as they are delivered, analysis of the implications and reaction.
Readers will be invited to submit e-mail questions on the Budget, of which a selection will be answered on Thursday morning by Irish Times journalists and tax experts from Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
