Path of least resistance not the fairest

IN THE hours before Michael Noonan got to his feet yesterday, you would have been forgiven for expecting a declaration of war rather than a budget speech.

Gardaí clad in high-visibility vests stood in knots on all approach roads to the gates of Leinster House. Molesworth Street, which runs right up to the gates, was cordoned off. Brand new super-reinforced crash barriers were in place around the whole environs of Government Buildings. It was as if somebody in authority feared that great swathes of the population would finally rise up and strike out against years of austerity.

Not a chance. The populace at large have long resigned themselves to their fatalistic lot. Besides, Noonan and Brendan Howlin are too astute to declare war on any major cohort of the population at this late stage of the austerity game. Their speeches were never going to include a detail that might incite the people to storm the barricades. Instead, in keeping with a trend of the last few years, it was a case of guerrilla warfare, identifying the points of least resistance, and hitting home with the pain of 1,000 different cuts.

Both men put the best foot forward, letting all and sundry know how they have saved the country from the perdition to which Fianna Fáil had condemned it. The positive wasn’t so much accentuated as hyped through the chamber’s roof. Both laid it on thick before getting around to the meat of their respective speeches. Howlin, for instance, had to get nearly two thirds of the way through his 15-page speech before announcing anything new.

Among his old news was that €200m of lotto money will go to the Children’s Hospital, and €10m has been set aside for Priory Hall residents, their plight having been, he said, “a particular blot on the national psyche”. On he went, enumerating all the good stuff, coating his cuts in honey.

The big ticket items were safe as houses yesterday. Child benefit was left alone. Social welfare payments to the unemployed and pensioners were untouched. Class sizes weren’t increased. It remains an article of faith that income tax can’t be tampered with or the sky may fall.

Instead, it was a budget of taking from a diverse cross-section of the populace. Unemployed young people will now have to wait until the age of 26 before receiving a full social welfare payment of €188. Up until 25 they must make do on €100, before getting an extra €44. The telephone allowance for elderly people has been scrapped, which will, no doubt, ensure that RTÉ’s Liveline will be jammed with protests before the new regime kicks in. The funeral grant is to be discontinued.

All of these targets are well-chosen. The cuts announced won’t hit home immediately. Unlike a lighter pay packet at the end of the week or month, these are measures that will affect different people at different times. Even the elements afflicting elderly people are not harsh enough to mobilise mass protest from a cohort that has shown itself to be capable of organised protest.

The treatment of young people on the dole tells plenty about the politics of this budget. There has been a shrill chorus emerging from some quarters shouting that young people on the dole have no incentive to work. This is largely based on unfocused anger rather than any evidence. Where are all these jobs that are going unfilled? Instead of tackling a lazy assumption, the government is pandering to it. A 23-year-old woman who can’t get onto a training course is now expected to live on nearly half the amount a 26-year-old will receive. Yet, as always, politics rather than social justice has driven the measure. Young people — apart from students — won’t take to the streets. By and large, they don’t vote. And after yesterday’s latest blow, even more of them are likely to take the next plane out of here, trailing an air of resentment.

Similar political considerations inform the decision to provide free GP visits to children under five. The measure is budgeted to cost €37m at a time when €113m is being taken from spending on medical card schemes. Who is paying for the government’s political headline on the under-5s? Those on the threshold of qualification for a medical card? Those with chronic illnesses, as highlighted in the Irish Examiner? Are they expected to suffer in quiet desperation for a political stunt? Again, it’s the point of least resistance that has been targeted.

There have been harsher budgets. There have been budgets informed to a far greater extent by political considerations. Belatedly, there is acknowledgement of the pressures at frontline services with the announcement of the recruitment of more teachers, guards and nurses. The allocation of €25m to mental health services is welcome, although form suggests the money may end up diverted. But ultimately, political considerations had an overweening influence on this budget. The Labour Party, in particular, is in deep trouble, and the imperative in the party is to avoid anything that might cast them as agents of austerity. So the hits had to be spread out, where the reaction would not be too loud, the resistance weak.

“This is going to be a massively challenging year,” Health Minister James Reilly said as his press conference concluded. It sure is, but as has been the case so often in recent years, the worst cuts are directed at those who can least bear the pain.