Buried deep in Minister McCreevy's Budget documents was a rather peculiar item. Listed under the section "Enterprise, Trade and Employment", subsection "Other", diligent taxpayers could read: "An additional £1 million is required for technical reasons".

Whatever could this mean? The Margin called the Department of Enterprise and Employment but received only the suggestion that the Department of Finance might know the answer.

On Merrion Street the State's top boffins toiled with the problem for some time. Eventually, they explained that the Government had to spend the £1 million in order to receive certain employment grants from the European Union, themselves worth more than £1 million.

After this highly technical concept, programming the video recorder should be a piece of cake.