The Brians deserve serious credit – you could hardly see the wires as they stood up, writes MIRIAM LORD
THERE IS every reason to be “confident”.
This is a “new start”.
We are taking our “first step”.
Chin up! chivvies Brian as he unveils Ireland’s first puppet Budget.
Fair play to the Minister for Finance. He was on his feet for three-quarters of an hour and you could hardly see the wires.
The same goes for Brian Cowen: very lifelike, even though the IMF has one hand stuck up his Government’s fundament while the long digits of the EU dance overhead, pulling the strings.
Oh but “there are clear signs of hope”.
Outsiders running the country with the help of a Taoiseach and his highly paid Cabinet of clerical assistants.
Crowd-control barriers surround Leinster House, keeping protesters out and politicians in. As night falls, the Kildare Street gates are locked and the Garda dog unit moves in closer to the angry crowd.
It’s freezing cold. Dirty snow is banked up along treacherous footpaths. Dublin’s water supply is cut off by the council.
What look like election posters have gone up on the lampposts along Merrion Street. They are adverts for a chain of bookmakers, offering odds on who will become the next leader of Fianna Fáil and who will become next taoiseach.
Reasons to be cheerful? Not many in Leinster House yesterday.
But “every reason to be confident”, Brian Lenihan told a sullen Dáil, even if he looked anything but.
“Today’s Budget is our first step.”
As opposed to “The Next Steps” – which was Fianna Fáil’s election slogan. Their next steps tipped the economy headlong into a black hole.
The jig is up, but never mind. We just have to learn some new moves. Going forward. That’s important, because they went backwards in 2007.
This, despite what some begrudgers might say, is not because our political leaders lost the run of themselves and became what Michael Noonan yesterday called “the braggarts of Europe”.
It was because they wanted “to spread the benefits of the boom across every section of the population”.
Brian Lenihan said this with an admirably straight face.
But back to taking our first step. The Minister for Finance feels we are up to it now.
He wasn’t so sure just before he arrived in the chamber to present the puppet Budget.
“Be careful walking out – it’s very slippery today,” he cautioned photographers at Government Buildings during the traditional Budget-day photocall.
“Minister, stay out of it!” roared a handler when he looked like he might step into a hillock of slush.
Things are bad enough.
He held the document like an open book, each side in an upturned palm. Like Moses bringing down the tablets of stone – Lenihan can’t erase or rewrite them. That’s the preserve of the IMF-EU puppeteers.
The distinguished visitors gallery was packed for the occasion. Even the British ambassador sat through all the speeches. This Budget was of huge international interest.
Former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald sat in the front row, a splash biscuit beige among all the dark navy suits.
Outside, news crews from TV networks around the world looked for eccentrics to interview. No shortage there.
The two Brians wore similar shirts – blue and white stripes, but Biffo’s garment was a darker shade of blue.
The Minister’s speech was short on specifics and long on buzzwords. Welfare cuts became “social protection adjustments” while jobs were “activation places” while Lenihan had high hopes for “a new national performance indicator to allow a variety of quality of life measurements to be assessed and reported on a regular basis”.
He said he wouldn’t be reducing the old-age pension. The terrible twins of the 30th Dáil – Jackie Healy-Rae and Michael Lowry – looked pleased.
There were smirks in the direction of Michael D Higgins when it was announced the President’s salary would be capped at €250,000 and wry smiles from the Opposition when it was announced that the use of State cars would be pared down.
(Afterwards, Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney claimed that the changes wouldn’t affect Ministers.)
Then Brian said he would be introducing changes in relations to the property market. Had they been in place years ago, the bubble wouldn’t have been so bad. Pity they didn’t introduce the measures back then, so.
The speech was met with restrained applause from the Government benches.
There was a sense of power passing. Everyone was waiting to hear what Michael Noonan would say for Fine Gael.
He didn’t disappoint. “This Budget is the Budget of a puppet Government . . .” he began, before comparing Fianna Fáil to the Bourbons. He was very impressive. “I came in early and wrote the start and the ending and then just winged it in the middle. Once I got going, it kinda flowed . . . I’m good with sums,” Mr Noonan explained afterwards.
Dr FitzGerald was very impressed.
”Absolutely excellent speech,” he told us as he was leaving. “So little time to absorb so much. I couldn’t do it.”
Then he left with his copy of the Budget. “They asked me to go on television tonight, but I said no. Too much reading to do,” he said, tapping the document happily.
Labour’s Joan Burton described the Budget as “Unislim for the rest of us while Drumm and Dunne party on in Connecticut.”
It was a lame sort of day. Too much given away in advance.
Even the bar was quiet – for a Budget day.
Without a doubt, Noonan stole the show. And just in case the Government didn’t sense the passing of power, he finished with a quote from Michael Collins: “Give us the future, we have had enough of the past. Give us back our country to live in, to grow in, to love.”