Don’t panic, things aren’t as bad as they seem. Or are they?

TWO men in the pub are discussing the issues of the day.

Man 1: Do you feel more encouraged about the future after listening to Enda Kenny’s televised address last Sunday, reassured that your troubles are not your own fault, that he understands you didn’t cause any of this?

Man 2: Not when I have to keep paying for them, especially when I knew that they weren’t my own fault anyway and didn’t need him to tell me.

Man 1: But wasn’t it good to see someone positive and understanding in charge, somebody who clearly cares?

Man 2: I reckon Brian Cowen cared too but it didn’t mean he was up to the job. And even if he made a complete mess of handling the economy he was smart enough not to come out in front of the people and try to justify it all on television. It’s not empathy and emotion I want but solutions. Not words, but actions.

Man 1: I think Cowen should have spoken to us a couple of times on the television. He should have painted it all out after the bank guarantee and after Nama was set up and when the IMF took over in November last year. He should have set out what needed to be done. That was a mistake all right. Kenny is better about facing up to things like that.

Man 2: And what makes you think Kenny is making tough choices, as he claimed? Kenny is paying one of his key acolytes nearly €40,000 over the agreed rate for a job as adviser to Richard Bruton and he cries crocodile tears about tough choices and sacrifices. That’s unreal boy, paying your man that much money and telling everyone else they have to do with less.

Man 1: Sometimes you have to pay well to get the top people. Paying Ciaran Conlon €127,000 might be a wise investment.

Man 2: Really? Where is the evidence for that? He was a spin-doctor in Fine Gael, not some high flyer they plucked from a well paid job in the private sector. I don’t know much about this guy but I doubt if he is a game changer. He’s Enda’s mate, who I hear stood by him when there was the coup against him in the summer of 2010. You can’t cut disability payments for young adults by nearly half and claim that this is warranted by our economic distress and at the same time overrule officials who wanted to pay Conlon at a lower and already generous rate.

Man 1: Well, they’ve realised their mistake on the disability payments I suppose. They say they’re reviewing it which must be a way of saying they won’t do it now that the public has kicked up about this one thing in the budget. And doesn’t it say something that this is the only issue from the budget that the public seems to be really getting mad about.

Man 2: Did you lose much money because of the budget?

Man 1: I’m not really sure yet. I’m waiting to see how much my VHI bill goes up because of this stuff about public hospitals charging for private beds. Other than that, I’m fairly all right I think. A few euro more on motor tax I suppose and I’ll notice the VAT on things but I’m not too badly off I suppose, all things considered, given that I have no pay cut and no extra income tax from this budget.

Man 2: I had to give up the health insurance last year when I lost all the overtime and took the pay cuts. I’m well down on child benefit because of having five kids under the age of 16. I’m really afraid I’m going to lose my job before Christmas because my company is the type that’ll let me go now because of the new redundancy refunds scheme the Government wants to put in place from January.

Man 1: I’m not excusing any of that but I suppose it could have been worse, couldn’t it?

Man 2: Really, in what way?

Man 1: There could have been even more taxes, more cuts. Think about it: the gap between what the Government spends and takes in is still over €15 billion each year. That can’t go on and it’s not just down to the cost of bailing out the banks. It is the price we have to pay to get those loans from the IMF and the others now that we’re not able to borrow in the normal way on the markets.

Man 2: Are you mad? This has been going on for years now, increased cuts, charges, cuts in what we get. No wonder most people are spending so little in the shops, that unemployment has soared, that people are emigrating. We’re finding it hard to pay day to day bills, let alone clear our debts. All of this money won’t be repaid, the money we owe on our home mortgages, the money this country has borrowed to bail out the banks. It’s all nuts and it can’t go on. And yet we’re being told by our masters in Europe that we need another three years of budgets like this one and probably more again after that.

Man 1: Maybe it’ll all get fixed at this EU summit today. Maybe they’ll save the euro, stop all the panic and then write off part of our debts.

Man 2: Do you really think so? Can I have what you’re drinking? Do you think Enda will tell Angela Merkel and Nikolas Sarkozy to take a flying jump when they say he has to sign a treaty but that’s he not to put it to the Irish people for a referendum first in case the Irish people exercise their democratic right to say no? Do you think he’ll be able to hold the line on not increasing our corporation tax, the one that brings lots of foreign multi-nationals to this country and keeps them here? Do you think the French and Germans really care about what happens to us?

Man 1: I have every confidence that they won’t try to do all of that to us and that even if they did try that Enda wouldn’t let them. He knows he can’t sign a treaty giving away more power without asking the people for their permission. He told us that his ambition on becoming Taoiseach was to restore our sovereignty. He can’t do the opposite and survive. He can’t make something that he said is temporary and that he wants to reverse into something even worse that is permanent. This Government and the last have told us that corporation tax is the red line they will not cross.

Man 2: And just because it can’t happen you think it won’t? You think that when Enda is asked to jump he won’t respond “how high”?

Man 1: I’ll admit that you can’t predict the future. I admit none of us saw things getting as bad as they have. I know this should have been sorted out by now and not by the way they’re trying to do things now. I know it’s not right and it’s fair but I believe that these things always get sorted.

Man 2: The right way? We’ll see how comfortable you are when the Government can’t get money from anywhere to pay the bills, has to introduce an emergency budget that hikes up taxes further and cuts public sector wages and when the banks can’t give out cash at the ATMs.

Man 1: You’re totally over the top with all that sort of stuff. That’s just mad, talking like it’s the end of the world. That’s an awful attitude, defeatist nonsense.

Man 2: So just because Enda came on the telly and said that he’s working hard to make it all right that’ll it be all right? With all of what’s going on that’s beyond our shores and our powers. I really hope I’m wrong, I pray I am. I can’t afford it but I need another drink.

The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.