BRIAN LUCEY: Coalition played to the markets, ignoring the good of the people
The budget, like Enda Kenny and Eamonn Gilmore, is cautious, careful, technocratic and minimalist in terms of its aims. It is a holding operation, designed to do the minimum — the minimum in terms of adhering to the needs of the troika, the minimum in terms of some red (actually dyed) meat for the labour backbenchers, the minimum in terms of a signal to the markets that the Government will remain cautiously incremental in its exercise of very limited autonomy. The Government is safe, in all senses, and remains focused on external perception, ignoring in its massive majority, the internal dynamics of society and the Irish economy.
For all the sound and fury, it is dull. It is a dull throbbing pain for all of us, enlightened by occasional flashes of acute discomfort. A budget that keeps low corporation tax and hits the elderly, the sick, children and the poor is hardly one that bears the hallmarks of a Government with a socialist party involved.
