Savage blow for struggling masses
SETTING down his paper after digesting the gloomy pre-budget forecast, Brian Duggan barely needed a moment to recall exactly how many jobs he’s applied for since being laid off.
“167 and counting,” said the former restaurant manager.
“And you know how many interviews I’ve got? Five.”
The 61-year-old from Dun Laoghaire has even tried to find work as a film extra since his restaurant was forced to close two years ago.
“At my age who wants to employ me?” he said sipping a coffee in Davy Byrnes, an evocative art deco pub off the city centre’s Grafton Street made famous by its mention in James Joyce’s epic Ulysses.
“But I’ll get by. My wife works as a nurse and though she’s taken a big hit to her pay we’ll just about have enough to manage. Who I worry for is the low-paid workers that are being hit by the budget, it seems they’ll suffer the most while the affluent escape the pain.”
Tales like Brian’s are recounted in this landmark-setting daily in Ireland 2010. Every punter pulling up a stool to the grand marble bar has been knocked by the recession in some way.
“At the start of the year I made a conscious decision,” revealed pub manager Frank Doyle.
“I brought the staff in and told them they needed to go out of their way to be as positive as they could. To do all they could to try and cheer people up. There’s enough depression outside the door so we try to keep it out of here.”
The biting wind and sleet on the slush-covered pavements did little to lift the spirits on Dublin’s streets as Finance Minister Brian Lenihan outlined the most swingeing budget in the state’s history.
The meteorological metaphors were all too obvious as the soulless grey skies unloaded on those below, but Dublin’s citizens had no interest in imagery on a day like this.
Joanne Ryan, originally from Sligo, warmed her hands on her takeaway lunch carton as she took shelter on her office porch.
“I am one of the unlucky ones who bought their own home three years ago in the boom,” she sighed. “I’ve stopped watching the news because all I hear is one hit on homeowners after another.
“Before today I was just about getting by; paying my bills and maybe going out once a month. After today I’m not so sure.”
For 26-year-old council street cleaner Peter Tobin there was no escape from the bitter temperatures.
“I’ve been hit in the pocket and my girlfriend is going to lose child benefit for our three-and-a-half year old Kate,” said the Dublin man.
“I reckon we’ll be around €130 down a month. We can’t cope on that.”
If deprivation-hit Dublin at the turn of the 19th century provided the backdrop for Joyce’s Ulysses, today’s authors can also draw on austere inspiration.
Nollaig Downey from the south Dublin suburb of Ranelagh is a clinical psychologist by profession, but writing is her hobby.
“My latest story is about a man who was laid off in London and moved to the west of Ireland to try and start again so of course the economic situation gives a context,” she said, while slicing a scone in the ever popular Bewley’s coffee shop.
The mother-of-four wishes the current situation was the stuff of fiction.
“I’d already taken a 14% cut off my pay before today and now it’s only going to get worse,” she said.
Paul Caswell, from Co Fermanagh on the northern side of the border, lived in Dublin through the boom years of the Celtic Tiger.
He left only to return three years later to find a nation turned on its head.
“I moved away in 2005 at a time when Irish politicians were gallivanting around Europe lecturing everyone else as to how it supposedly should be done,” he fumed outside the elegant Georgian facade of Buswell’s Hotel, which sits in the shadow of the Dáil.
“They now hold out the country’s begging bowl.
“This budget is going to make the hangover from the boom last for many more years.”
But while he lays blames at the Government’s door he doubts whether political change will have an impact.
“I just wonder if a new government will make or even can make a difference,” he said.
Yards away the masses of protesters made their feelings clear in a variety of ways.
Painter Ramie Lahy, from Co Kilkenny, did not seem concerned that his oil canvases portraying the country’s politicians as clowns were getting drenched.
“The theme is the circus that is Irish politics at the moment,” he explained.
“Are you selling them?” one wag shouted out as he padded by on the treacherously slippy roadside.
“You couldn’t afford it,” Ramie snapped back, in words that resonated deeply.
In a bizarre episode ahead of the budget announcement, brewing tension between demonstrators and gardaí was momentarily defused when waiters from the nearby five-star Shelbourne hotel delivered coffee and croissants to all those waiting outside the Dáil.
In another marketing coup, a well known bookmaker had erected a number of politically themed posters.
“It’s time to clean up!” they proclaimed.
A placard displayed by a lone protester with no discernible commercial interest put it rather more bluntly.
“Bankrupt, bollixed and bewildered!”
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