Images of Budget Days down the decades

Each autumn the Minister for Finance and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform appear on the steps of Government Buildings clutching their spending, tax and borrowing plans for the following year.
They’ve made their decisions about how public money will be spent and the level of taxation needed to fund their plans. All that’s left is to present the good and bad news to the Dáil in the Budget Day speech, traditionally concluding with the words: ”I commend the budget to the House.”
Budget Day, with its set-piece photocalls, is a fixture of Ireland’s political calendar. It used to be a giddy, high-stakes day – and night – on which Leinster House was alive with gossip and intrigue, but has morphed into a more mundane and prosaic affair in recent years.
Our selection of images from Budget Days down the years may trigger memories, negative and positive.
Some of the men pictured here who presented Budgets in years gone by are no longer with us, others are still going strong. Ireland has yet to appoint a woman as minister for finance.
Ministers of the day hope for no alarms and no surprises but dangers can lurk in the small print: the 1982 proposal to put VAT on children’s shoes that contributed to the collapse of the government still haunts the political memory.
All photographs chosen by Chief Video Journalist Bryan O’Brien