Imposing cuts but protecting privilege

The cuts to home-help and home-care services may be a foretaste of December’s budget but that does not make them in any way palatable.

These are lifeline services but cuts affecting elderly and disabled people dominated the package designed to save just €130m from the HSE’s overall budget of something around €13bn. That €130m pales even further when you consider that the HSE is well over budget and further cuts are inevitable unless the goalposts are moved. Or, more accurately, unless our Government finally finds, as it will have to eventually, the courage to move those deeply rooted goalposts.

Yesterday Labour leader and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said the cuts are “regrettable’’ but that “every organisation, every department and every service has to obviously work within budget”. It’s impossible to disagree with any of that. Education Minister Ruairi Quinn said cuts had to be made “because we have lost our economic sovereignty, we are no longer in control of our cheque book”. Again, it’s impossible to disagree with any of that.