Budget 2027 is not going to be the budget that the Government expected to deliver, and the Coalition will be forced instead to piece together a household support package as prices and cost of living pressures mount throughout the year, former tánaiste Simon Coveney said on Tuesday. He also said that April’s fuel protests “took the Government by surprise, to some extent”, and will add to the pressure on the Coalition during upcoming public pay talks.The retired Fine Gael politician was speaking during a panel discussion led by former RTÉ broadcaster Bryan Dobson at the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland’s (BPFI’s) annual banking conference in the Mansion House in Dublin.“I don’t think the Government will be able to put the budget that they wanted to put together for this October,” the former foreign affairs minister said. “They’ll have to respond, as ever, to an unexpected series of events that have resulted in households in Ireland being under a lot more pressure than they otherwise would have been.”Coveney, who joined Big Four firm EY as a geopolitical strategy consultant after retiring from politics, said the Coalition would have preferred to deliver a “big tax package”, aimed at enhancing Ireland’s economic “competitiveness”.[ The Irish Times view on budget planning: surrounded by an air of unrealityOpens in new window ]“I think there will be an increased pressure now to look at, effectively, a household support package, which the Government thought they had managed to move away from,” he said in response to a question from Dobbins.Coveney said he thinks Ireland and the global economy are “in for potentially a much more difficult summer and second half of the year than markets would suggest and inflation predictions would suggest”.Against that backdrop, he predicted that the Coalition “may be forced into reshaping the budget around trying to respond to pressures that are coming from a more dramatic inflationary environment”.Could we be heading toward a world recession if Trump can’t broker a deal with Iran? Listen | 34:04Coveney also said that the “extent” and “aggression” of the fuel protests by agricultural contractors and hauliers in April “took the Government by surprise to some extent”.He said they also gave “a signal to others”, including trade unions, “who are frustrated and looking to advocate for change that there is a way of putting the Government under pressure”.Coveney said: “For example, this round of public sector pay talks may be much more challenging for the Government than anything we’ve seen for quite a number of years.”Because there is a “perception” that there is no left-wing party in Government at the moment, there is “for the first time in Irish political history, the perception of a right-left divide”.In that context, Coveney said that left-wing Opposition parties will support trade unions to “push hard”.