When will the Department of Finance draw down the first of the European or IMF loans? Surely, we already know the answer – Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen have told us that the state is fully funded until their next summer holidays. Haven't officials told us repeatedly about the famous cash balances prudently borrowed from abroad in 2009? Then there are those liquid assets in the National Pension Reserve Fund too.

Not so, says Lorcan Roche Kelly, the man from SixMileBridge in Co Clare, who has established his reputation as Ireland's most knowledgeable central bank watcher and the best at throwing light on obscure releases from the Irish Central Bank and from its owner, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. He's also good at deciphering the state's finances and his new blog site is excellent too.

Kelly argues that the cash balances will soon be depleted because the state will continue, even after the austere budget, to eat through huge amounts of money next year – about €340m each week. That sum does not include the redemption of a €4.6bn bond due this time next year. Then the so-called liquid pension money is not so liquid, he notes, because the domestic pension pot contains assets which are not ready to sell. Separately, the-back-of the-budget documents hint at the same outcome: "Based on a refinancing requirement of €4.6bn in late 2011 and a borrowing requirement of €17.7bn, the overall funding requirement for the state in 2011 is estimated at some €22.3bn. By contrast, the NTMA raised some €35bn in long-term funding in 2009," said the department last week. If Kelly's sums are right, the government will be forced to tap some of the €67.5bn in international loans right in the middle of an election campaign early next year.