Does a whole generation matter less than a moment of football roguery?

SO, are we going to be as angry as this on budget night? Or are we going to show them that our country deserves better?

I was beginning to think there was no getting over the result of the match the other night. What a sickening feeling that was when we all realised we had been cheated out of a possible place in the World Cup finals.

Possibly the most blatant handball in the history of the game, at least in its televised history. There were no blurred images, no possibility that our eyes had deceived us. And suddenly we were out. Robbed. The better team, as objectively as possible, beaten by an inferior team on the night.

But then we all seemed to go mad. The demands for a replay might have been dismissed somewhat brutally by Roy Keane, but it was never going to happen, was it? There was talk of a march on the French embassy, even suggestions that the ambassador should be called in. Our ministers appeared on Sky News, CNN, probably Al Jazeera, for all I know, demanding justice for our cheated people. (You should savour that, you know. Our ministers. Demanding justice. For our cheated people. You couldn’t make it up).

All through the week, wherever you went, people could talk of nothing else. At the weekend, some of the papers were suggesting we should sue Sepp Blatter, head of FIFA. The referee was said to be distraught and in hiding.

And an electrical goods chainstore was offering an “Henry scrappage scheme” — if you have an Arsenal or France jersey with his name on it, bring it in here and we’ll give you €50 off any purchase.

By Sunday night I was convinced we had lost all perspective as a nation, that we’d gone from the bitter disappointment of losing an important football match to some sort of crazed and angry mob.

And then, to cap it all off, Jedward were booted off the X Factor. It was clear enough, actually, that once the production hype was taken away from them, and they had to rely on their voices in the “sing-off”, the limitations of two youngsters who had given us hours of entertainment were cruelly exposed. One couldn’t, I think, argue that this was a case of Ireland being robbed.

But still — how much more can this poor benighted country take? Then, at the weekend, another side of Ireland began to show itself.

Thousands of people suffered real hardship and discomfort this past weekend, as torrential rain threatened to drown the lower half of the country. The pictures from Cork and Bandon and Galway were horrifying, and the long-term damage will be substantial.

But as the story emerged, it began to seem as if the country was really pulling together through a genuine natural disaster. People due to go on strike today decided that the immediate fate of their community was more important.

Others — much-derided public servants, a lot of them — came in to work on their days off (for no pay) to make sure elderly people had water, that no one was at undue risk and that people had somewhere dry and warm to sleep.

If we all felt sorry for ourselves after Paris, there was no sign of it in the way people reacted to a real disaster. They just got on with it and helped each other out.

But very soon now, we are going to face the toughest national budget in our history. That’s really going to test us.

If we are to believe all the leaks, this budget is going to take 20% of the benefit paid to every child in Ireland. The poorest of poor children will be given something extra in some other form of payment, but children living at the margins of poverty will simply see a vital support cut.

What that means is that those children living below the poverty line will stay there and those just above it will slip below that line.

We know now that during all the years of our prosperity, we succeeded in lifting one child in every five who lived in consistent poverty in Ireland out of that poverty — from just below the poverty line to just above it.

Children who live in consistent poverty, by the way, don’t have enough protein in their diet. They don’t have clothing that’s appropriate to the weather that has submerged half the country. They don’t have warmth in their homes at any time of the year. They don’t have adequate access to healthcare or a right to decent educational chances.

They have a mountain to climb, each and every one of them, and they don’t have much strength to do it on their own.

We also know the prime instrument in lifting some — not nearly enough — children out of consistent poverty was child benefit.

The massive increases in child benefit may have been timed to coincide with general elections, but they nevertheless made an impact on the lives of children.

A 20% cut in child benefit now will simply take the children who were lifted above the poverty line during the years of the Celtic Tiger and dump them back below it.

We know now, from the work that Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan has done, that there are hundreds of children growing up at risk in Ireland. These are children who have come here from war zones and from backgrounds of incredible deprivation, and they have been treated in some cases in an almost Dickensian way.

But those children are not alone. There are thousands — yes, thousands — of children known to our system to be at risk of neglect and abuse.

THOUSANDS of children who are at risk of being exposed to drug and alcohol abuse in their early teens. Thousands of children at risk of serous mental health collapse.

And there is no money in the kitty for them, and likely to be even less after budget night. The system that has to address all those issues, whatever its other shortcomings, can’t do it without at least some extra resources. But no extra resources are available.

Maybe, just maybe, this is something we need to get angry about. Maybe even more than being robbed of a place in the World Cup finals. We mightn’t be able to sue Sepp Blatter after the budget, or march on the French embassy. And I’m sure if anyone tells Thierry Henry about what happened in our budget we can’t expect anything more than a Gallic shrug.

But isn’t it time we demanded to be listened to by our leaders? If they can defend our God-given right to be in the World Cup, surely they can defend Ireland’s kids with the same passion?

If they can speak with knowledge and authority about the need for video refs in a football match, then surely they can insist that every Irish child is warm and well fed? Or could it really be true that what happens to the Irish football team is more important, or capable of making us more angry, than what happens to the next generation of Irish youngsters?