Mystery solved. We now know why Dermot Ahern found nothing on Ray Burke when he was up every tree in north Dublin. It's because he wasn't actually looking.

One day long, long ago, the taoiseach summoned him to his office and said "Dermot, I want you to carry out an exhaustive investigation to establish once and for all if Rambo's been on the take from the builders."

"Righto, boss," said the future minister for justice, and off he scampered to fetch his climbing boots. But not a whiff of a brown envelope did he detect among the abundant sycamores and great oaks of Swords and Malahide. Why? Because he kept his eyes closed all the time he was looking.

Well, if Humpty Dumpty was your boss, would you take his instructions literally? Even pedantic, pettifogging, party-pooping economists thought it wise to apply a metaphorical interpretation when Bertie Ahern ordered them to go and commit suicide.

The problem with custom and practice, though, is it turns into a habit. Next thing you know, it's policy. Last Monday night, when the justice minister appeared on Questions & Answers and declared that the (supposedly) annual budget is no more than a statement of intent, he confirmed our worst suspicions. Nothing they say means what it purports to mean. His defence, in a blizzard of logic that the government had brazenly reneged on its budget promise to abolish long-service payments for TDs, was to deny they meant it when they said it.

As there has been no demur from a single member of the Greens or the single cabinet member of the PDs, we must assume that empty promises are the coalition's official policy. The government has gone native after too much company-keeping with Fianna Fáil and its family motto is that a solemn undertaking is as good as a nod 'n' a wink, lads.

Ahern's answer explains everything.

Two budgets (one of them euphemistically labelled "supplementary") in the space of six months have left such a trail of dishonoured commitments as to make Casanova look like a sincere gentleman. While we have come to expect the occasional effluvium of disingenuous waffle from our politicians, the budget is traditionally regarded as sacrosanct. It is the most ritualised expression of self-determination in the Oireachtas calendar. On budget day, the words spoken by the minister for finance are deemed so irrevocable they are strictly embargoed. To breach that embargo is to be in contempt of the constitution itself. Fine Gael's Phil Hogan paid for his indiscretion on 8 February 1995 by resigning from the government, barracked out of it by an incandescent Fianna Fáil. As if secrets warrant being secrets when they are as flimsy as flights of fancy?

How strange to hear the minister responsible for law enforcement blithely announcing on national television that the budget is little more than a parliamentary cabaret, when servants of the state scrupulously guard it as the gospel of the nation. Someone should tell those Department of Finance officials who burn the midnight oil working on its contents and the Dáil ushers who are forbidden to circulate copies of the minister's speech until proceedings are under way. And what about purveyors of the old reliables? When increases in excise duty on petrol, alcohol and cigarettes are scheduled to come into effect at midnight after a budget, do retailers shrug their shoulders, think "sure, the budget's only an oul' statement of intent", and ignore it? No, it's a safe bet that, were they to try that, they would soon find themselves in the shadow of the taxman.

Not 'measures', just wishful thinking

Politicians see themselves as being above all that. They see themselves as incapable of breaking promises because they don't make them in the first place. Most citizens are under the delusion that the government has already rowed back on a dozen or so measures announced by Brian Lenihan in his brace of budgets. Well tut-tut, us nincompoops. For now we discover they weren't 'measures' at all; just wishful thinking. When elder citizens hovering around the poverty line worried themselves sick after the 14 October budget that their medical cards would be rescinded, really, they ought to have known better. It was only the government flying one of its kites. Forty-eight hours later, the minister raised the eligibility income threshold and ordered that such expenses as mortgages, tax and medical expenses be deducted before the qualification level was calculated. Quite a different story.

When Lenihan said in October that he was introducing a two-stage income levy of 1% and 2%, he really meant he was bringing in a 3% one as well, but he didn't get around to mentioning that until a month later. Then, in the 7 April 'supplementary' budget, he lowered the qualifying thresholds for payment, starting with 2% at €75,000, and said: "These measures will take effect from 1 May 2009". Eight days later they had been back-dated to 1 January, with utter disregard for households' needing full knowledge to formulate their own micro-budgets; especially where income-earners had taken a cut in pay for the latter part of the year and, so, were extra-badly hit when the levy was made retrospective.

Around the time he introduced the after-thought 3% levy for high-earners, the finance minister promised to tackle the inequity of tax-exile. Then he came and went with another budget in April, and the 5,800 tax exiles kept coming and going too – flying in and out, immune in their private jets from the new travel tax.

Once again, of course, it's all the fault of that ass, the law. Tougher restrictions could not be imposed, Lenihan explained a month after promising to deal with it, because Ireland is saddled with various double taxation agreements with other countries which would have to be reopened for negotiation. My, but how the law keeps getting in the way of obvious measures like judges taking the same pay cut as everyone else, or former taoisigh foregoing crazy pensions payments.

As for the travel tax, it was not set in stone either when first announced in the October budget. Soon after, the cut-off point when common-or-garden airline passengers had to pay €10 instead of €2 to get off the island was rejigged to account for Knock and Shannon being farther from Manchester, Birmingham and London than Dublin. The problem with spinning a statement of intent – as opposed to formulating a budget – is you tend not to waste time on the practical minutiae.

Take the parking levy. In October, we were told that a flat-rate €200 levy would attach to any car parking space provided in an urban area by an employer. As the days bleed into weeks and the weeks bleed into months, and the potential complications multiply, that one is looking less and less likely ever to become a reality.

Bertie-in-a-sulk-Ahern

The following statement, uttered by Lenihan in his 7 April budget, sounds categorical, don't you think: "Deputies will no longer receive long-service payments or increments"? And how about this one on the same day: "The arrangement whereby former ministers are paid ministerial pensions while they are still members of the Oireachtas will be discontinued"? Pretty unambiguous, wouldn't you say? Sorry, but once again you're wrong. A week after uttering those words, the minister let it be known that TDs will continue receiving their perverse long-service payments and that some impressive, legalistic-sounding way is being devised to wriggle out of denying Bertie-in-a-sulk-Ahern his €150,000 pension. Yet more good intentions falling by the wayside of constitutional banana skins. Who'd have thought?

Government-by-Walter Mitty ordained in the October budget that it "has decided a targeted voluntary early retirement scheme will be introduced for the HSE and discussions are under way on the development of such a scheme". Nearly five months later, health minister Mary Harney told the Dáil the government would implement the planned €2 billion public expenditure savings before even thinking about the HSE's personnel. "When this has been dealt with, the government then will consider other matters, including the introduction of a voluntary early retirement scheme for the HSE," she said, contradicting what the finance minister had said back in October.

In that first budget too, Lenihan announced: "I am conducting a review of the National Pension Reserve Fund in the context of recent economic and fiscal developments. It is my intention to complete this review before the end of the year." The deadline year, he clearly implied, was 2008. Here we are nearly into the fifth month of 2009 and – guess what? – no sign of the promised report. The value of the national pension reserve fund fell by 6.7% in the first three months of this year and the government extracted €7 billion from it for the banks' bailout (that the IMF says will cost us closer to €24 billion), and still no analysis of the fund's performance is forthcoming.

Hans Christian Andersen

Back in October, the finance minister undertook in his budget speech: "We are determined to protect the most vulnerable in our society and we will redirect resources to that end." Then he announced 32 cuts in the education budget, 16 of them at primary level. Such was the outcry when it became clear that 534 children in 119 schools would lose their teachers because of reductions in the budget for special needs education, yet another volte face was required.

If only Dermot Ahern had told us in advance that the budget is the collaborative creation of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, we would not have raised our hopes when Lenihan avowed on 7 April: "Fairness must be the cornerstone of all our efforts to achieve economic renewal." Amid the avalanche of evidence that the government puts its own and party interests ahead of the people's (flying from Malin to Mizen in tax-paid jets and unable to muster a blush of embarrassment over the millions squandered on e-voting machines), to find that even they do not believe their own words must be some kind of watershed in the democratic relationship with the people. As the government prepares to skip down the path of imagination for next December's budget, it might, perhaps, pause to ponder this: What happens in the land of ever-after when everyone stops believing?