Record crowd budget breakfast briefing

A record crowd turned up at the Greville Arms Hotel on Wednesday morning, to discuss - over rashers, sausages and eggs - the pain that Brian Lenihan"s dreaded 2008 version of the 'hairhsirt' budget was going to bring.Hosted by Mullingar Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Longford Road investment firm Global Invest, the event was a huge success, and the in-depth analysis of the budget given by the Church Avenue-based accountancy firm, BDM was welcomed by all.Paul O"Brennan, President of Mullingar Chamber of Commerce, opening events, said he regretted that the Government had chosen that the 1 per cent employment levy should go on all workers, regardless of how low their income, and he went on to speak on a subject close to his heart: the construction sector.'We"re asked to pay over the odds for the minimum wage in the building industry,' he said, adding that because the minimum wage was so high, the difference between the wages of a skilled tradesman and an unskilled labourer was now only about €1 per hour. He added that he did not believe other minimum wage workers, such as those in shops or the hotel industry, worked any less hard than labourers in construction.'The minimum wage should be slashed back in line with other industries,' he said.Mr. O"Brennan also said the Government should 'raid' the CIF pension scheme. 'A lot of workers who worked in the building industry would have lost the benefit that the companies would have paid in for them. The unclaimed funds from that pension scheme should be put into the National Pensions Reserve Fund.'Michael Donnellan of BDM Accountants commented that the Minister for Finance"s opening address to his budget had been unusual. However, he said, the budget 'wasn"t as bad as people expected.'We had been set up for a "hairshirt" budget,' he said.He noted the major points, including the fact that Ministers and senior civil servants are to take a 10 per cent pay reduction; and that 41 government agencies are to close or merge with other bodies. He welcomed the news that the decentralisation of the Department of Education to Mullingar was to go ahead.'It will be built out, and 306 people will be moving to the Department of Education on the Lynn Road,' he said.Mr. Donnellan said that there had been severe credit crunches in the past of the type we are currently experiencing. In the early 1800s, there was one such in the USA in which 343 banks collapsed within six months. This too had followed a period of rapid property speculation during which property prices went up 219-fold in 15 years.Further analysis of the budget was done by Phil D"Arcy, Director of BDM, who went through the impact of the budget on corporate matters including the requirement on any company with a corporation tax liability of more than €200,000 in its previous accounting period to pay preliminary corporation tax a month before the end of the current accounting period.