Confronting the deficit - Universal allowances unaffordable

The public reaction to the budget kite that children’s allowance payments might be cut for some better-off families does not auger well.

It suggests that many of us have yet to grasp the great depth of our difficulties and accept that most of us, no matter how deserving, face a budget-provoked income cut before Christmas.

Virtually every response to the leaked suggestion has opposed it, ignoring completely the unavoidable truth that welfare payments account for around 40% of all Government spending and that something has to give. Nearly all of us acknowledge we cannot continue as we are, yet when a measure to reduce spending is proposed the squealing begins.

Some welfare spending, like the spending in every government department, will have to be cut and surely it is right to focus on a universal, automatic allowance paid irrespective of need? Surely it is better to focus on taking the children’s allowance, entirely or partially, from those who do not need it rather than cutting another allowance vital to its recipients?

This seems both equitable and rational.

Unfortunately, it appears that we have come to believe that the election bribes of the past are immutable, permanent, inviolable entitlements, almost human rights, rather than what they should be considered — the support guaranteed by one citizen to another delivered through the offices of the State to protect them from depravation and hardship. It is unfortunate that measures designed to support vulnerable individuals have come to divide a vulnerable society.

Of course all of this debate would be rendered academic if something as basic as means testing could be applied to the problem. It is still, even after all of these years, beyond belief that such a mechanism defies the wit of those who would be responsible for devising such a scheme. Is it too cynical to suggest that the turkey-voting-for-Christmas principle applies here? That those charged with introducing any such system would suffer as a consequence, hence the difficulties? Let’s hope it is too cynical but the evidence stands.

Despite the unfair and unsustainable imposition of private bank debt; despite the fact that the Coalition, especially Fine Gael, seems determined to show that there is little enough difference between them and their predecessors; despite awkward, clumping prevarication where there should be leadership; despite the glacial pace of reform and despite our increasingly haughty and dismissive EU partners, the arithmetic of the public purse remains the same. We’re living far beyond our means and must address the issue.

Restoring children’s allowance payments to what they should be will be just one tiny part of that terribly difficult project. That project must be judged in the round and not on one measure alone. If it addresses today’s problems fairly and effectively, if it protects the vulnerable and, like France’s president François Hollande did, demands that those with most pay most then we cannot expect too much more. If it does not then that’ll be time enough to start squealing.