49-minute ram-raid on family life
The massacre of the infants’ earning potential witnessed those under the age of six having their contribution to family funds cut by six months.
Clawing back the end point for the already wildly inadequate €1,000-a-year Early Childcare Supplement from six years old to five and a half years old, did however, dove-tail perfectly with the spitefully regressive nature of the rest of Mr Lenihan’s first budget.
The underlying idea for the 49-minute ram-raid on Irish family life seemed to be not so much tax and spend, as tax and leave them to fend for themselves.
Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes once summed-up human life as nasty, brutish and short — Mr Lenihan went one further, his budget was nasty, brutish and short-sighted.
No doubt the Finance Minister thought long and hard before relieving families of the meagre child care help, then he concluded: Why should those smug little toddlers not be forced to dig into their pockets like everyone else? This is a time for sacrifice — not nappy-wearing spongers.
Mr Lenihan sat down to receive a lavish standing ovation from his Government colleagues after he had tried to hide the sheer fiscal thuggery of his statement under the fig-leaf of nationalism by branding his daylight robbery: “Nothing less than a call to patriotic action.”
The hubris of the moment enraged the opposition as the House erupted in noise and turmoil.
It was all too much for Fine Gael’s James Bannon, he wanted to stand to let his rage explode further, but this would have meant it looking as if he was joining in the applause for Mr Lenihan. ! !
Mr Lenihan’s shameless attempt to wrap himself in nationalism was in a way appropriate as he had just effectively nationalised the Government’s litany of economic mistakes.
The old and the cold were footing the bill for letting the property bubble explode in all our faces and failing to cool an economy over-heating to the extent it was clearly about to go up in smoke.
As Labour’s Joan Burton pointed out, the €2 rise in fuel allowance would barely buy a box of firelighters. Shame the pensioners would not now be able to afford anything to actually set alight as their benefits had taken a real terms cut. But then they could always try and keep warm by setting fire to their now useless medical cards.
So that’s the legacy of the boom? That’s the legacy of becoming the second richest country in the world — that our old people shiver through winter wondering if they will pass the means test to be able to afford a doctor when the damp sets in?
The Government that used to boast of the number of millionaires it was creating, now happy to tax those on the most wretched wages in society for the first time. They called it “solidarity”. Well, we are all united in being poorer now — all equal in our negative equity.
Brian Cowen cut a defensive, angry figure through the budget, clearly stung by the relentless opposition charges that this was already a homegrown economic slump given crisis cover by the ravaging of the bitter winds of international recession.
But don’t say the Government did not hurt its own in the orgy of revenue grabbing. Betting tax was doubled to 2%, which will surely cramp Bertie Ahern’s style next time he is down at the race track.
Mr Ahern was, after all, the man who handed over the keys to economic policy for the past four roller-coaster years to the present Taoiseach, so perhaps it’s poetic justice he tastes a slice of the pain.
Apart from tinkering with aspects of business rates, this was an intelligence-free economic statement. The only idea the budget contained seemed to be to lash out in sheer panic at anyone who could be shaken down for a few quid. The sick and the poor, young families and old people — everyone was tax-splattered with the same wild abandon, while the disaster of decentralisation chugged on and ministers remained too timid to tackle the country’s bloated bureaucracy.
And where were the Greens? Wagging their tiny tails at being thrown a bike to work perk bone and living on yet another Fianna Fáil promise to justify their participation in Government with a carbon tax sometime over the rainbow.
Mr Lenihan insisted this was a brave budget which would pull the nation together.
In reality, it was a lazy, vindicative and cowardly budget that will only succeed in pulling our society further apart.
