Along with a badly negotiated bailout, the Budget puts the greatest burden on those least able to bear it, writes VINCENT BROWNE
BRIAN LENIHAN ended his Budget speech yesterday saying: “There is every reason to be confident about the future of this economy and this country if we only have confidence in ourselves.” The problem is that he and the Government have given us every reason not to have confidence in themselves and, as a consequence, in ourselves. The scale of the economic collapse has been far greater than anyone foretold and the magnitude of the cost of the banks has been beyond anyone’s imaginings. Nothing said or done in yesterday’s Budget gives us grounds for confidence or optimism.
One only has to look at the EU-International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme for financial support for Ireland. Specified is a catalogue of miseries to be inflicted here over the next several Budgets, spelt out in gory detail. And topped with the menace that only “in exceptional circumstances” may alternative measures be adopted and then these will be “considered” only “in close consultation with the European Commission, IMF and ECB staffs”. Cut after cut in social protection provisions, cuts in the minimum wage, in public service numbers and, if that doesn’t work, then cuts in public service pay.
The closing of tax breaks and marginally higher taxes for richer people, announced in yesterday’s Budget, certainly spreads the burden, but in terms of ability to bear these additional burdens, the most weight will be borne by the very much less rich.
The labour “reform” plans are the most insidious: pressurising people back to work by lowering unemployment assistance at a time when there is no work or, at best, where there is work but work paid at €7.60 an hour. Nobody who devised that strategy ever lived on €7.60 per hour! Incidentally, the going rate for lawyers, medics, accountants and other professionals is €450 an hour.
There was at least an acknowledgment in the Budget speech that we needed what is euphemistically called “external support”. A few weeks ago, there was absolute denial as though this punch-drunk cobble of Ministers were in denial that their management of our affairs had brought the country to this abyss.
That bit of the speech which stated “there is simply no way this country, whose banks are so dependent on international investors, can unilaterally renege on senior bondholders, against the wishes of our European partners and European institutions”, captured the deference to international finance that has done us in.
I assume by “country” Brian Lenihan meant the State. There is every way this country or this State should unilaterally renege on senior bondholders, whether against the wishes of our European partners and European institutions or otherwise.
Why should we, the people, be required to bail out those who were reckless enough to lend vast amounts of money to the Irish banks? What has it got to do with us? We confused this issue on September 30th, 2008. Why go on doing so?
If our European partners and European institutions are desperate not to renege on senior bondholders, then let them bail them out. And isn’t it instructive to realise that there is no way any of our negotiators stood up to our European partners and European institutions in the talks leading to this abject deal and told them that.
It’s because of a mindset, a mindset that the big boys cannot be defied even if failing to do so impoverishes the small boys and girls. And it is that mindset that framed the Budget and the Programme for Financial Support for Ireland which frames Budgets to 2014.
We are headed towards devising a nasty society: one less generous even than the present one; one with less solidarity than now; with more inequality, more stress, more violence, more premature deaths.
It is the legacy of this present cobble of Ministers.
Many in this same cobble of Ministers are about to depart the national scene, some voluntarily, others at the behest of the electorate. It is quite likely Brian Cowen, Mary Harney, Pat Carey, Eamon Ó Cuív, Tony Killeen, Mary Coughlan, Dermot Ahern (obviously), Eamon Ryan, John Gormley and Noel Dempsey will never see ministerial office again and several of them will never be members of the Dáil again.
On present showing, Fianna Fáil will be lucky to lose only half the seats it won in 2007.
And on present showing, a Fine Gael/Labour coalition will have over 100 seats, a majority of more than 32, which will have its own hazard: the likelihood of even more than the usual arrogance. Just wait. That is unless Labour implodes in the election campaign. The diving and ducking over policy decisions, the frenetic determination to say nothing at all that will alienate any segment of voters, the driving opportunism, the cynicism of it all. It could do them damage, bring them back to about 15 per cent of the vote and reduce their seats to 30 or less, with Sinn Féin and the Left Alliance gaining at their expense.
But the diving and ducking might work and the electorate might be fooled again, which won’t do much for the health of our democracy, in so far as we have a democracy.