There is little doubt that since the foundation of this state, Budgets have done much to define us as a society and underline both the opportunities and the difficulties that are the hallmark of a particular era.

Ernest Blythe, appointed Finance Minister in the new Irish free state in September 1923, for example, packed much into his long career, and lived until 1975 – but will forever be remembered for the decision he made to cut a shilling from the weekly old age pension payment of 10 shillings in the 1924 Budget.

This is a reminder that Budgets of the early years of this state highlighted the huge gulf between the rhetoric of the revolutionary generation that brought the state into being, which insisted independence would bring greater prosperity, and the reality of devastatingly cruel balance sheets, a weak industrial sector, falling prices for agricultural produce and the costs of a bloody civil war.

Blythe embraced these realities sternly, along with the contemporary economic orthodoxy of cutting public expenditure and discouraging active state intervention that would interfere with free trade. Expenditure fell from £28.7m in 1923/4 to just £18.9m in 1927/8. Salary cuts for public servants were implemented and the old-age pension was targeted because in 1923 it amounted to £3.3m out of total public expenditure of £20m; in cutting it, Blthye demonstrated that the Government would not shirk the challenge of balancing the books even if it meant inevitable political unpopularity.

Revolutionary turned pragmatist: Ernest Blythe on 1916

That idea of balancing the books dominated the approach of Blythe’s successors for decades afterwards. After the calamitous Wall Street Crash of 1929 and Fianna Fáil’s new approach of active state intervention to build a highly protected economy through the imposition of many tariffs, after it came to power in 1932, cuts were the order of the day – the desired self-sufficiency in industrial and agricultural production did not make for prosperity.

Seán MacEntee, appointed Finance Minister in 1932 where he remained until 1939, and who occupied that position again in 1951, was regarded as one of the possible successors to Eamon de Valera, but he was greatly damaged politically by the 1952 Budget, which was referred to as “the famine Budget”. He faced a trade deficit of £123m and to rectify this, increased income tax and the cost of what were then some of life’s essentials, including petrol, tobacco, spirits, ale, stout, tea and sugar.

While these moves succeeded in ensuring a sharp decline in the trade deficit, industrial production did not rise, unemployment remained stubbornly high and the 1950s became a decade characterised by emigration, with 60,000 leaving the country in 1957 alone. MacEntee conceded that the finances of the state at this stage were “difficult to the point of despair”.

The influence of T K Whitaker as an innovative secretary of the Department of Finance, who insisted on a reorientation of the economy to embrace outside investment, foreign trade and the dismantling of protection, ensured that the fortunes of the Irish economy improved in the following decades. But this did not mean that Budgets remained straightforward.

Rising expectations created new demands and new dilemmas particularly about borrowing to finance further economic expansion. Some of the most important and damaging budgetary decisions were made in the 1970s, and though they may not have caused the same kind of public commentary as the harsh Budgets of the 1920s or 1950s, they nonetheless had profound consequences that were recognised and admitted behind the scenes.

The decision of George Colley, as Fianna Fáil’s Finance Minister in 1972 to resort to borrowing for current expenditure, a practice avoided by his predecessors, was a crucial economic turning point in the sense that the principle of balancing current as distinct from capital expenditure was abandoned.

TK Whitaker, by then governor of the Central Bank, recognised the gravity and implications of this move, insisting “once a large deficit had been allowed to appear the government would find it extremely hard on political grounds ever to close the gap again”. He was correct, and the fiscal irresponsibility of unsustainable borrowing, alongside inflation and a small open economy vulnerable to outside volatility ensured a difficult 1980s.

Political instability combined with tough Budgets characterised the decade; in January 1982, the Fine Gael-Labour coalition endured the defeat of Finance Minister John Bruton’s Budget, which generated much emotiveness over austerity proposals and is best remembered for its proposal to introduce VAT on children’s shoes, which resulted in the collapse of the Government.

A booming economy, however, is no guarantee of uncontroversial Budgets. Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy’s change in the tax system in the Budget of 2000, to benefit working couples at the expense of one-income couples, led to sustained protest. At the time Michael Noonan, then in opposition, responded to this proposal by saying: “I do not know where it has come from, it seems to have come out of clear blue sky.”

Rejection: Bertie Ahern's governments, spurred on by economic prosperity, had a habit of throwing curveballs into their Budgets

McCreevy had quite a penchant for conjuring up surprising tricks; his announcement in the 2003 Budget of decentralisation was one of the more farcical. The proposal to move eight government departments to 50 towns around the country was allotted a budget of £20m but with no target date. By 2008, more than 2,500 public service positions had moved out of Dublin but the government had spent £230m, the vast majority of which went on property, much of which remained empty and unused.

Given the scale of the economic crash from 2008, a return to severe austerity Budgets became the new norm, which, it is being predicted, will end with tomorrow’s announcement.

But perhaps the biggest change over the decades has been the extent to which practically all the content of the Budget is well flagged or deliberately leaked in advance; in the distant past, those who worked on typing up the speech could not leave the building until the minister had stood up to speak.

Looking at these historic Budgets collectively, the extent to which they have defined the various twists and turns in the state’s development and status and Irish society’s well being or otherwise is striking. Claims that Irish republicans would free the Irish economy from foreign tyranny were very common and popular almost a century ago.

Trying to deliver on such aspirations was a tortured, much interrupted process, that involved little scope or appetite for economic radicalism and then rebuilding, adaptation and engagement in new types of economic management and planning.

A robust export trade and the merits of a more open economy were clear from the 1960s, but prosperity also brought its own challenges, most obviously, an approach to budgeting that would sustain progress. While obvious domestic mistakes were made, such as borrowing and spending way beyond means, these were also the failures of a small open economy facing a volatile international climate.

Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD