Children finally escape harsh cuts

EVER since Brian Lenihan introduced the first austerity budget, I’ve approached this time of year with dread, and usually ended budget days in despair.

The rolling back of social programmes, the punishment of anyone who doesn’t have a voice, the cutting of supports from under people who need them most — all of these things have been among the leading features of austerity.

In the old days, commentators always referred to the “old reliables” — drink, tobacco, and petrol — as the things that could easily be predicted for another tax hike in the budget. In recent years, child benefit has become like one of the old reliables. Cut after cut, always off the top, have had hugely disproportionate impacts on lower-income children and families.

I’ve written about it here before — at the start of December each year the Government publishes child poverty figures, which show clearly that the previous year’s social welfare cuts have driven more children into hunger and cold. Before the ink is dry on those statistics, the next budget hacks away a bit more.

Except this year.

This year, for the first time since austerity began, the most basic support to families in terms of rearing their children has been protected. Indeed, it’s fair to say that this is the best budget for children and families for a good many years. And so, although I was afraid of what the budget could bring, I’ve ended the day feeling almost hopeful. I never thought I’d say that again!.

For sure, it was a tough budget. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if, as some of the details begin to unfold, we discover that it’s every bit as tough as its predecessors. I’m very struck, for example, by the phrase “medical card probity”. The budget documents don’t explain what that phrase means, only that it is there to save €133m.

(That’s €133m more than is intended to be saved by taking medical cards off higher-income pensioners.)

I’m guessing (and hoping I’m wrong) that it means there is going to be a pretty savage bureaucratic trawl through the large percentage of the population that holds medical cards now. That may well produce a huge backlash.

But I have to say this. For all that the budget is tough, it’s also surprisingly, and refreshingly, progressive in many of aspects. The introduction of free GP care for every child under five in the country is a brave and bold measure. It will, I hope, be a significant step towards the development of free universal primary care in Ireland. That’s good for the country, good for our children, and good for our overall health and well-being. And ultimately, it’s an investment in cheaper health costs. Free GP care, properly delivered, drives down the cost of hospital care for everyone.

In my day job in Barnardos, one of the things we have campaigned hardest about in recent years has been the cost of starting a child in education. I don’t think there’s a radio station in the country where one or other of us hasn’t been interviewed about the need for a national book rental scheme and other common sense measures to take the fear and anxiety out of what ought to be a really exciting time in the life of a child, and his or her parents.

So the announcement that there is going to be a national scheme, starting in primary schools and, I hope, ultimately extending to the second-level sector, is a genuinely welcome measure.

There is time, between now and the start of the next academic year, to get this right. I’m hoping that the next time we in Barnardos start to put our annual school-costs survey together, parents will be saying, “problem? What problem?”

There are a lot more specifics that I could talk about, some good, some bad. But there was an overall feeling about the budget this year that I think came through quite strongly.

This time, the often-referred-to light at the end of the tunnel did appear to be visible. You have to squint a lot, and peer long and hard, but it definitely seems to be there. The decision to recruit more teachers and special needs assistants will, for example, bring genuine hope to hundreds of families who have coped with immense challenges. There is an element of social conscience about decisions like that which has been sadly lacking in our overall response to the economic crisis.

Or perhaps it’s something slightly different. Perhaps it’s a recognition of what some of us have been saying for years — if there’s a burden to be borne, it should be borne by those with the means to do so, rather than by those without the voice to say no. If that’s the corner we’ve turned, then I for one will vote for it.