AS Ruairi Quinn ran through his speech live on RTE 1 yesterday afternoon, Alan Dukes, Mary O'Rourke, Eithne Fitzgerald, Desmond O'Malley and Pat Rabbitte were dishing up a vintage form of political entertainment over on Network 2.
These representatives of the five main parties sat around a table in Montrose and deployed the complete range of rhetorical tools - interruption, sarcasm, outrage, hyperbole, cliche, rash promises and the greatest weapon of all in these encounters, blinding with statistics.
Mary O'Rourke feared that the income tax reductions together with rises in Government spending would make the economy "overheat" (cliche).
Desmond O'Malley was "extremely disappointed" at the paucity of the tax cuts at a time of "unparalleled prosperity" (outrage with perhaps a touch of hyperbole).
He also disputed Mr Quinn's statement that there would be no more PRSI reductions in coming years, saying: "There will be reductions in PRSI if the Progressive Democrats are in government" (rash promise).
Down in Waterford, the three workers lined up at the Allied Signal factory were also disappointed. Paddy Daly, on what was described as a "fairly average industrial wage", said his extra fiver a week would be gone "before I even get it" because prices would rise.
He would have liked to see tax on social welfare abolished as well as a reduction in the 48 per cent tax rate.
Joanne O'Sullivan had expected "a little bit more" than a fiver a week as well. Michael Parkinson, who earned over £20,000 a year would also have liked to see the 48 per cent band reduced.
Back in studio Des O'Malley was very agitated about the 48 per cent rate as well. Pat Rabbitte wanted to give him the "hard neck of the year award" for "bleating about the plight of those on 48 per cent and then talking about reforming the tax and social welfare systems to provide an incentive to work. How do you reconcile that with special pleading for the 48 per cent tax band?"
He suggested that one of the workers was "talking through his hat" (cliche) when he expressed concern at the low level of social welfare while at the same time saying that PRSI payments were too high.
Just as Pat Rabbitte was telling us that "a married couple on £28,000 with four children gets £18.50 extra per week", Des O'Malley interjected: "Provided he lives in a tent and, doesn't drive a car."(interruption and sarcasm).
At another desk, the director of the Combat Poverty Agency, Hugh Frazer, had worked out that an unemployed person with one child would be 20p a week worse off, once inflation was taken into account.
Eithne Fitzgerald did some sums and thought that this person would in fact be £2.40 a week better off (blinding with statistics).
"Are we supposed to celebrate that?" asked Desmond O'Malley (sarcasm). "It wouldn't even buy a packet of fags ... if you were smoking them."
Representatives of various interest groups were brought in front of outside broadcast cameras to say their piece. The ICTU assistant general secretary, Patricia O'Donovan, was pleased that the tax changes were weighted in favour of the low-paid and middle income earners.
The IFA president, John Donnelly, was pleased that concessions to farmers agreed in Partnership 2000 were contained in the Budget.
Trevor Sargent of the Green Party remarked that the most grateful people also seemed to be the most articulate, while the poor were not seeing the benefits of the economic booms.
The most lively studio exchanges always began just as the presenter Eamonn Lawlor was trying to shut them all up.
The three male politicians on the panel would all begin talking at the same time, their angry snipings echoing vaguely in the background as their microphones were turned off.
But the last word goes to Eamonn Lawlor: "The fact is that a single budget is not going to make much difference to anybody's life" - (realism)