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We have a broad of picture of what Wedneday’s budget will contain if the downpour of leaks and kites flying over Leinster House is guidance enough.

Allowances for older people, child benefit, property tax and a “mansion tax” have all been highlighted. There is also reported to be tensions between the coalition partners as the final details were hammered out.

Pat was former Taoiseach John Bruton – he suggests that while we may be feeling the pinch compared with the way we were, it is important to keep austerity in proportion.

Also in studio were Eddie Hobbs and Eamon Timmins of Age Action

The Government gave the go ahead recently ,after years of debate, for a new national children’s hospital on the site of St.James’s Hospital. The project will take an estimated five years to complete and in the meantime of course sick children will use existing hospitals.

Professor Owen Smith, is one of the country’s leading paediatric cancer specialists and a member of the Dolphin Review Group which assessed locations for the new children’s hospital.

“Rift”, “tensions” and “bitter split” were just some of the descriptions in the press over the weekend of the budget negotiations between Fine Gael and Labour. We were told that an increase in the USC for those earning over 100,000 was a red line issue for Fine Gael who saw it as a breach of their promise not to increase income tax rates, while Labour were set to be vehemently opposed to any cut in weekly social welfare payments. The Irish Independent tells us today that two words have calmed the waters and restored harmony between both governing parties and they are “mansion tax”. Fionnan Sheahan political editor of the Irish Independent joined Pat this morning.

Today in South Africa, one quarter of people are living on State handouts, 50% of youths are unemployed, more than 6 million people are living with HIV/ AIDS and the mortality rate for children is worsening. In addition crime is getting worse with the average murder rate five times the global average and the rand is weakening.

Amid these worsening figures, support for the current South African President, Jacob Zuma is weakening yet in the background a huge groundswell of support continues to grow for the now expelled member of the ANC party, Julius Malema, still in his early thirties, who has been a controversial and decisive figure since his emergence on the political scene. Fiona Forde, an Irish journalist living in South Africa since 2007 has written a book entitled An Inconvenient Youth - Julius Malema and the ‘new’ ANC and joins us today to discuss this political player and his influence.

There’s a bus that travels in the darkness around the edges of Dublin City. When it stops, dozens of people emerge from the shadows, from alleyways and squats into the light and the warmth and the welcome aboard. What is this service? Valerie Cox went to find out.

Sridhar Rangayan is a critically acclaimed film director, screenwriter, producer and activist. He is also a controversial figure in his home country of India, mainly as a result of his sexuality.

To mark World Aids Day, he will be in DCU today to show his film, '68 Pages', a film about HIV in India and he came in to talk to Pat this morning.