A sideways look at Budget 2015: A touch of Frost after the Big Chill of austerity

THE Big Chill is over but a distinct frost remains in the air. Robert Frost to be precise as Michael Noonan quoted the poet’s most famous work The Road Not Taken as his narrative guide when the Government declared austerity to be at an end.

Reprising the opening line: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...” the finance minister loftily promised he would never again allow Ireland to take the road through boom and on to bust, but in reality he was tipping the wink at side-kick driver Brendan Howlin to slam on the accelerator and bomb it down the yellow brick road to the next general election as they scattered borrowed fivers from the open car windows while speeding away in a desperate attempt to buy back some popularity.

With more leaks than the collapsing water supply system, this budget ensured that austerity went out with a whimper rather than a bang, but as the opposition gleefully pointed out €5 on child benefit here, and 0.5% off USC there, is all going to be swept away by the gush of Irish Water bills in January.

And those bills will still bite despite the tax rebates suddenly showered through the air as the Coalition shuddered from the shock waves of the weekend byelections which showed that the country was so angry even Sinn Féin is now considered too conservative on Irish Water.

As Micheál Martin has declared himself busy preparing to be Taoiseach (Memo to Micheál: It might be a better use of your time to prepare to be heave-shooked), Fianna Fáil’s finance spokesman Michael McGrath stuck it to the Government with a couple of zippily hard-hitting one liners.

VISIT OUR DEDICATED BUDGET 2015 SECTION FOR MORE NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Referring to an email from Tánaiste Joan Burton heralding the budget as being aimed at helping the low paid and the vulnerable, Mr McGrath said: “We would not get that kind of propaganda in North Korea, I honestly thought that Kim Jong-un had come out of exile to write an email for the Labour Party.”

On international tax changes: “I hope the Ireland team put up a stronger defence to the Germans than you did on corporation tax.”

But his funniest line had to be when he attacked the budget for being straight from the book of old school politics with the intention of short-term gain.

An insult indeed given that said book was Fianna Fáil’s blueprint master work for many decades in power which led us to the age of austerity in the first place.

Demands for a wealth tax from Sinn Féin and the Lefty-pendents were again ignored.

But while not imposing a tax on luxury goods, Taoiseach Enda Kenny appeared to sanction a jewellery tax — otherwise known as an attempted smear tax — on his own backbenchers.

Because it just so happened that an email sent to the Taoiseach regarding a rather curious tale of Fine Gael rebel Sean Conlan and a €10,000 ring somehow managed to get into the papers.

Mr Conlan insisted it was a nothing story and marvelled at the coincidence that just two weeks after he railed against the Taoiseach and Arts Minister Heather Humphreys over their slapstick handling of Cronnygate — and had warned the Kenny machine sought to crush any internal opposition within Fine Gael — a two-month-old email gets on the front pages. What are the chances of that?

Hardly a horse’s head in the bed, but clearly a clumsy piece of attempted political manipulation none the less.

Should not the shadowy wing of Fine Gael have more important things to do in the run-up to a budget?

Back in the debate, Mr Martin got very cross about government ministers not showing the opposition respect by walking out of the chamber en-masse, and Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald got thrown out for accusing the Ceann Comhairle of deliberately disrupting her, so it was all budget day business as usual then, and the Dáil bar ended up doing one of its roaring trade nights even without the excuse of TDs needing to toast the end of austerity before the prices went-up at midnight as that now-oh-so-nice Mr Noonan decided to hammer the smokers and leave the drinkers alone.

Gambling all that unexpected extra tax cash on winning back some popularity with one hand, while keeping the fingers on the other desperately crossed that the threatened down-turn in the Eurozone would not leave us again bust next year — but this time without even a boom to remember, the finance minister received 15 seconds of applause from his own side as he sat down.

Though while Mr Noonan was desperately attempting to nail austerity into a hastily constructed coffin, it was his own coughing that got all the attention on social media.

And so, not at all panicked by being almost as unpopular as the government they promised to replace with a democratic revolution of accountability and competence, the proposed €2bn tax and cut budget was magiced into a €1bn spend and mend attempt to win back affection.

But after three and half years of so many cack-handed cuts, particularly to the disabled and many vulnerable groups in society which have not be restored, maybe a there could have been a more apt Robert Frost quote to summarise things?

Though originally referring to a bank, the poet’s musings could easily work for Coalition Towers too when he declared: “It is a place where they lend you an umbrella for fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”

VISIT OUR DEDICATED BUDGET 2015 SECTION FOR MORE NEWS AND ANALYSIS