Budget days still have a semblance of formal drama, despite the relatively recent practice of proposals being well and truly thrashed out, leaked, brought down to wires and finally getting over lines strung across government departments.
There's the formal photo, with Budget publications now taking the place of battered briefcases.
There are the speeches in the Dáil and the responses from the Opposition.
Interest groups have their say and give their verdicts. Radio phone-ins hear from the public and are often where unforeseen banana skins appear.
And then the cacophonous caravan moves on for another year.
Most Budgets concern themselves with the gradual evolution of spending and tax decisions, influenced by resources, inflation and political demands.
Some Budgets deliver changes that are more long-lasting. This week’s Budget was one of them.
The Government made two moves in the Budget, both of which look to the future and both of which may mark the beginning of something long-lasting.
The first and most obvious was the announcement of two funds to invest some of the budget surpluses generated by the windfall in corporation tax receipts in recent years and the surpluses expected in the years ahead.
The second decision just squeaked in, with little fanfare and even less comment.
That was the decision to increase both employer and employee PRSI rates from next October by 0.1%.
That is not a big level of increase but the principal has been established that PRSI rates will rise to help pay for future State pension costs.
The Pensions Commission Report in 2021 said an increase in PRSI rates would have to be introduced if the decision was made, as it was, not to raise the qualifying age for the State pension. This had become a touchstone issue in the 2020 election campaign.
The Government accepted the principal but kicked to touch the scale of rate increase pending an actuarial review of the Social Insurance Fund (which is where your PRSI contributions go) which has now been completed.
The 0.1% increase announced in the Budget is only the very thin edge of the wedge, however.
A Tax Strategy Group paper published in the summer noted that Ireland has the lowest combined employer and employee social insurance contribution rates in the EU.
It noted the Social Insurance Fund will come under strain as the population ages.
It quotes from the recent actuarial review of the Fund which expects it to record surpluses up to 2033 but deficits thereafter.
If there were no changes to rates, the review expects annual deficits to reach €0.5 billion by 2035 and €3 billion by 2040.
By 2076, it projected deficits to accumulate to €500 billion.
A working paper by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council published earlier this year calculated that rates would need to rise by 3.5% from their current level.
The PRSI increase is only expected to raise €240 million in a full year. Some estimates of the costs of ageing through more spending on healthcare and pensions are already put by some at around an extra €1 billion a year.
The future is very much upon us.
And it is that future which will occupy the aims of the two investment funds. The legislation setting out their governance is expected to be published shortly.
The first fund, the Future Ireland Fund, is a long-term fund. It will take in approximately €4 billion from the existing National Reserve Fund, which is to be dissolved.
It will also receive contributions of 0.8% GDP per annum, under the forthcoming legislation. That means another €4.3 billion next year.
It is anticipated that up to €100 billion will be saved by 2035.
The investment returns on the fund will be used to defray future costs of everything from an ageing population to future economic challenges.
Another fund, called the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund, is planned to a more medium-term.
It will receive the remaining €2 billion from the National Reserve Fund and additional sums of €2 billion over the next few years until it reaches €14 billion.
The aim is to use it to maintain infrastructural spending through cyclical downturns in the economy. This is to avoid the stop-start approach to investing in infrastructure that has disrupted capital expenditure in the economy in the past.
It will also be used to fund climate and nature projects in any given year from 2026, up to a cumulative maximum of €3.15 billion.
The National Treasury Management Agency will be charged with running both funds. There is a lot of detail yet to be explained and worked out in how the funds will be governed.
But both these funds and the first move on increasing PRSI to face up to the costs facing us in the approaching future may mean Budget 24 will have a legacy that will live on after rows over tax breaks and payments subside.
