THE place was in a mess. There was blood everywhere, a dead body to be disposed of and two shooters living on their nerves. An experienced hand was required. It was time to call in Winston Wolfe, aka The Wolf, a man who solves problems and cleans up the mess that others make. Enter Harvey Keitel, as cool as a breeze and organised like a German industrialist on speed.

So went one storyline in the cult movie, Pulp Fiction. A new version of Mr Fixit was introduced to the screen. Brian Lenihan ain't no Harvey Keitel, but he's having to do an impression of The Wolf these days, cleaning up the mess that others have made. There is enough metaphorical blood on the carpet of the public finances to make it into a Quentin Tarantino movie. It is Lenihan's brief to clean it up. And in tackling the mess, he must tread carefully, for he treads on the folly of, among others, his current and former bosses.

Most of the solutions to balance the exchequer books currently being mooted have one thing in common. They are intended merely to undo damage done principally by Bertie Ahern, Charlie McCreevy and Brian Cowen.

The most obvious example is the proposal being floated to do away with an automatic right to a medical card for those over 70-years-of-age. This measure was introduced by McCreevy in 2001 in a typical self-congratulatory flourish. He sold it as the state taking proper care of the elderly.

In reality, it amounted to the state subsidising many wealthy individuals, like retired hospital consultants, High Court judges and bankers, who were well capable of taking care of themselves.

Around 30,000 people were supposed to benefit at a cost of £20m(€25.4m) to the exchequer. This constituency was one most likely to vote, and could be relied on to show their gratitude at the next general election.

In what would turn out to be a growing habit, McCreevy hadn't done the sums or negotiations. The cost of the scheme ballooned, with doctors, who weren't consulted prior to the announcement, charging four times the going rate for the new card-holders.

The scheme was a fiasco that didn't benefit society, but put the resources of an exchequer then awash with money to good electoral use for the government.

The decentralisation farrago that Lenihan is now rowing back on was out of the same drawer. No costing, no negotiations, just McCreevy using a time of plenty to plunder the state for political advantage.

Another measure being floated is the taxing of child benefit. This would have been an enlightened move if introduced a decade ago. Instead, the scheme was used as a method to redistribute wealth in a manner that benefited the electorate rather than society.

In 2000, the children's allowance was £42.50 (€53.98) per child. This year it is €166, whether or not the parent is among the 33,000 millionaires in the country or the 300,000 who live in consistent poverty. In the interim, there was no concerted effort to eradicate child poverty, or tackle the growing problem of childcare.

Cowen dealt with the childcare issue in 2005 in a manner befitting his predecessor as finance minister. He threw more money at it, introducing an extra €1,000 a year benefit for every child under six. There would be no difficult decisions during a time of plenty. Now Lenihan may take a scalpel to a scheme that ballooned in cost during the boom because there was no stomach to properly address it.

There is talk that raising income tax rates may be in the sights of The Wolf Lenihan. In 2006, reportedly against his better judgement, Cowen lowered the top rate from 42% to 41%. Ahern pushed the measure as a sop to the Progressive Democrats, whose sole policy platform was the lowering of income tax rates. There was no benefit to the economy in the move, none to society either. It was once more all about using healthy state coffers for electoral gain, even as the end of the boom lurked ominously on the horizon. Rowing back on that folly won't be easy, as it will involve raising taxes, a capital crime according to mainstream political philosophy today.

Killing the quangos is more of the same. The number of quangos ballooned in recent years because many of them served as a buffer for government, providing covering fire against tough decisions. Now they must be culled, and ministers are rushing forward to declare we have too many quangos. Who exactly established all these bodies?

Lenihan has the task of sorting out the mess. He must frame it as belt-tightening rather than mess-fixing because he can't point fingers at his boss Cowen, or party grandees Ahern and McCreevy. He is in the type of delicate terrain where Winston Wolfe did his best work.

Maybe the minister for finance could give Harvey Kietel a ring, get some tips on how best to act as a Mr Fixit, while keeping a straight face about who landed him in the mess in the first place.