Budget 2011 - There must be a price on these cuts

SO, there it is, another portion of the bill for our Icarus decade has been presented and it does not look at all pretty.

Yesterday was a dark day for Ireland and though no-one expected anything else so much more needs to be done to make yesterday’s slash-and-burn package palatable and ultimately successful.

It was another day that marked our failure as a functioning society with the principles or the political and regulatory institutions robust enough to resist some of the worst human nature can — and did — throw at us. It was a day that showed the Ahern debacle, and the roles his cheering supporters played in it, in its bank-breaking, optimism-crushing, anti-patriotic actuality. Accepting the depth of the crisis and responding appropriately is one thing but accepting the bitter cure is dependent on so many other contingencies.