Just seven short months ago, the question facing politicians, economists and to some extent the electorate, was what should the winners of the pending general election spend the €11bn in unallocated resources or "fiscal space" that they would likely have over the next five years on?
Fast forward from January to July, and today the Government pushed the button on a single package of additional measures for just the next year that will cost the State nearly half of that amount.
The massive change in attitude to fiscal prudence is a measure of how serious a situation we find ourselves in. In the interim, an unforeseen pandemic has swept the globe, claiming more than 620,000 lives and wreaking havoc on the world economy.