AND SO IT CAME to pass. Budget 2014 contained some of the good news that Michael Noonan had promised on Saturday,
Unexpectedly, there is enough money to recruit 1,250 new teachers next year, who will have work now that the pupil-teacher ratio isn't being cut.
Meanwhile we're promised that Garda recruitment will increase next year, and we get the happy news that all under-5s will be given free access to a GP from next year.
There's also enough money to hang onto the 9% VAT rate for the tourism and hospitality sectors, and we're told that the brave women of the Magdalene Laundries won't have to pay tax on their deserved settlements.
But the thing about Budget Day is that a lot of the good news is revealed in the Dáil, while the bad news filters out as people get to digest the news over the following hours.
Quickly the bad news began to emerge: Dole cuts for those under 26, increases on DIRT, and a slow whittling away of many of the payments that Ireland's most vulnerable depend on.
€44 million will be cut with the scrapping of the telephone allowance - a move which Pearse Doherty quipped would leave pensioners unable to call their TD and complain about other cuts.
The free GP care for younger people will be counterbalanced with 35,000 pensioners losing their medical cards, finding themselves having to cover the costs of their prescription medications.
There's also the cryptic reference to 'medical card probity' - where €113 million will be saved by taking medical cards off some people who already have them. One can be assured that not all of those claimants are undeserving.
Politically speaking it's a difficult one. Brendan Howlin did his best to whip his backbenches into a frenzy about the wonders Labour was managing to come up with, but the backbenchers were digesting the reams of documentation which showed the nitty-gritty of what they'll hear at their constituency clinics.
Meanwhile the opposition parties almost visibly sank in their seats as some of the good news came through. Eight months before the country next goes to the ballot box, we're going to be getting more Gardaí and more teachers, while every young parent will be able to bring their child to a doctor without worrying about the cost. What hay is there to be made?
The general sentiment among all the political classes in Leinster House is that it could have been worse, but everyone wishes it could have been a whole lot better.
