Climbdowns seriously undermined the previous coalition

THIS is not the first time a government was forced to climb down on a budget plan to take the disability allowance away from 16 to 18-year-olds.

In October 2008, Brian Lenihan’s first budget also announced the raising of the qualifying threshold for the payment to 18.

It was intended that 16 and 17-year-olds would receive the domiciliary care allowance, which would mean a drop of about €1,000 a year in their payments.

But almost two weeks later and following meetings with six representative groups, the then minister for social welfare, Mary Hanafin, announced a U-turn.

She said the government had “reflected carefully” on the concerns of families and representative groups and decided that the existing thresholds would continue “pending the completion of a full review”.

It was the third climbdown on that budget. The Fianna Fáil-Green Party coalition was forced to remove minimum wage earners from the 1% income levy and changed eligibility limits for the over-70s medical card.

The decision to remove the automatic entitlement to medical cards for over-70s had been the single most contentious budget measure since John Bruton’s proposal to charge VAT on children’s shoes in 1982.

The latter caused the downfall of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

Had it proceeded with the medical card move in its original form, Brian Cowen’s coalition would have been heading for a similar fate.

Unlike the issue of the disability payment now, it took the government a full week to partially climb down in a humiliating episode that undermined Cowen six months into his term as taoiseach.

A day after the Tuesday budget, there was massive confusion about the medical card changes and backbenchers began to vent their fury.

In a series of mini U-turns, the threshold at which over-70s would have their card taken was changed three times until one backbencher, Joe Behan, jumped ship on the Friday night.

This was followed by a hastily organised press conference by the Greens saying they had “concern” about the measure.

In an effort to stave off a full rebellion, Cowen said he would negotiate with doctors to see if savings could be made on the medical card scheme.

But by Monday, Independent TD Finian McGrath withdrew his support from the government.

The following day, the taoiseach called a press conference to apologise for the distress the fiasco had caused to elderly people and to announce changes to the income threshold, resulting in just 5%, rather than 30%, of over-70s losing the entitlement.

It was only the first U-turn of the day. By evening, Lenihan announced to the Dáil that the 1% income levy would not apply to those earning the national minimum wage of €17,540 or less.

The partial U-turn might have been enough to save the government from collapse. But it damaged Fianna Fáil among older voters and undermined Cowen’s authority.