“Eight Billion Surplus Divided By Five Million Is €1,600 Each” Local Man Points Out

WATERFORD man Jimmy Breen was quick off the mark with his calculator this week after hearing news that a government budget surplus of €8 billion has been projected for this year, WWN reports.

“That’s around €1,600 per person when you divide it by five million people, that’s almost the cost of a night’s stay in a 3 star Dublin hotel, sweet!” Breen pointed out, typing the sums in again just to be sure, “hey, sure don’t the bloody government owe us ten times that for bailing out the banks that time? I’ll take the first instalment in cash please and thank you”.

Replying to similar calls across the nation, Finance Minister Michael McGrath warned everyone to ‘hold their horses’ as there would actually be a deficit without ‘windfall’ corporation tax receipts.

“This country would be fucked if we didn’t have all the multinationals based here,” McGrath explained in layman’s terms, just so ‘everyone’ understands, “we’d be like a shanty town in India if they pulled out, so best hold onto this few quid for a rainy day, like in case we need to overpay a children’s hospital contractor again or something; it’s not there for you lot to piss away in a week long pub session – let us experts mismanage the surplus”.