The Budget has been generally well-received, except by economists. But, of course, they're dismal scientists, and we couldn't expect them to be cheerful about a give-away budget. I'll come back to economists, but first I must draw attention to the political skill evinced by the Minister in getting away with further substantial discrimination against families where one parent remains at home.
Mr McCreevy calculated that if he avoided using the word "individualisation" Budget commentators would fail to highlight his extension of this innovation, thus avoiding controversy.
And his calculation proved absolutely correct. He actually had the nerve - no one else but Charlie McCreevy would have attempted such a con trick - to hide an increase from £34,000 to £40,000 in the standard-rate income-tax band for double-earning married couples by suggesting that it was a relief for taxpayers with incomes just above the average industrial wage, which is now around £17,500 a year.
Don't take my word for this: let me reproduce here his remarkably brief reference to this matter: "The Government set out to reduce the number of taxpayers on the higher rate of income tax. Many of these taxpayers are earning incomes that are just above the average industrial wage. These are hardly that wealthier part of the community for whom high marginal tax rates are usually reserved.
"I have decided, accordingly, to widen the single-person standard-rate income-tax band by £3,000 from £17,000 per annum to £20,000 per annum, with consequential increases for double earners."
An adjective and an adverb did the trick: "accordingly" and "consequential".
I was in England on Wednesday so I cannot be sure that no one mentioned on TV or radio this bit of juggling by Charlie McCreevy. However, I looked for any reference to it in Thursday's papers.
I found that, although several commentators referred to the absence of "individualisation", neither they, nor the Opposition spokesmen, ail, seem to have felt it necessary to say said anything about the way the Minister managed to slip in this further move to discriminate in favour of double-earning families.
Of course, in case anyone did notice what he was at, the Minister threw a minor sop to families in which one parent works at home. For such parents the standard income-tax band goes up by £1,000, as against the £6,000 rise for double earners.
The net effect of this has been to increase the after-tax income of a double-earner family by a further £1,100 above what a single-earner family with the same income will get.
There is yet another clever feature of this Budget, and of this I strongly approve.
Charlie McCreevy was under great pressure from his PD friends to cut the top tax rate and he felt it politically necessary to concede to this pressure. However, Fianna Fail must have been very concerned to stave off the criticisms to which earlier budgets have been subjected, viz that higher tax reliefs were given to better-off people than to the less well-off.
And, by using adjustments in the Pay-Related Social Insurance (PRSI) payments by employees to take away from people on high incomes much of the benefit of the reduced top tax rate, this is precisely what the Minister has succeeded in doing.
The effect of his PRSI adjustments has been to ensure that above certain incomes the tax reliefs decline in percentage terms.
Thus, for double-earning married couples the percentage increase in take-home pay peaks at £40,000 a year, but as incomes rise beyond that the percentage gain falls off by between a third and a half.
For one-earner married couples the percentage gains decline as income rises, although with a slight blip - a small increase in the percentage gain around the £30,000 level.
All this contrasts with most previous budgets where the richer you were, the bigger the percentage gain you received. Given the rigidity of our income-tax structure, this result is quite an achievement in terms of social equity.
Through his obscured extension of the individualisation system Mr McCreevy has advanced the social engineering process of tempting married women to move from work at home to paid work.
Yet he has been careful not to succumb to pressure from employers and unions to intensify this process by introducing an inequitable system of childcare tax reliefs. Such a system would have discriminated against the many families who are not well enough off to be in the tax net.
Instead he has committed the Government to increases in child benefit which, over three years, will bring our child benefit payments up to the kind of level which prevails in most continental EU countries. This is a good decision.
Incidentally, I am puzzled by the support of trade unions for tax reliefs for childcare rather than for more equitable child-benefit increases. I can see why employers, concerned about the labour shortage, should want to relate increased child payments to childcare so as to increase the incentive for women to enter employment. But why have trade unions supported quite aggressively a tax-relief system which would discriminate against those not well enough off to pay tax?
Finally, what about the economy? This Budget increases public spending, exclusive of national debt interest, by £3.5 billion. The full-year cost of income tax reliefs is £1.25 billion. These two add up to almost £5 billion, a huge boost to an economy.
In Thursday's Irish Times four economists from the a wide range of areas - the business sector, economic research, consultancy and a university - told us that "a cautious approach to management of public finances would have been timely"; that the Budget should not have aimed at "maximising growth"; that it is "overly stimulatory"; that "it is an inappropriate macro-economic mix"; that "the fiscal stimulus is inappropriate"; and that it "will push wage rates up by over three percentage points".
And in yesterday's paper a business economist remarked: "This week's massive and ill-conceived fiscal injection into the economy will add further fuel to demand and ensure that inflation, broadly defined, will remain a feature of the economy in 2001".
Such unanimity among economists from very different background is almost unheard of. The best that any of them could say about the Budget was that "perhaps Mr McCreevy's luck will hold".
But, given the doubt which must exist about this, there may well be something in the suggestion by political commentators that this Budget could presage an election next year rather than 2002.
Certainly if I were Taoiseach after such a gamble of a budget I wouldn't want to wait around too long in case it reaped a whirlwind that could blow me away.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie