Well what a week it’s been. I’m going to have to keep myself in check as I write this today as I am feeling rather annoyed about the implications of the budget!
Everyone knew it was going to be tough and that everyone was going to be affected by the announcements. However, nobody could have guessed how badly the Government would have targeted middle income earners with young families... What have we done to you?!! These are the people who have been crippled following the utterances of the finance minister who clearly is not a middle income earner with a young family!
I question his actions. He was informed that the best way to beat a recession is to stimulate an economy into spending and living, as opposed to taking every cent of disposable income from people and effectively stagnating the economy even more.
However, in contrast to every piece of sound advice offered, he still decided to do just that. Families with two or three children have come to depend on Children’s Allowance as part of their income. They have made decisions on the strength of this income coming in. Taxing or means testing this payment is going to leave most families without it. Abolishing the childcare supplementary payment which was a half ass way of saying we are not going to provide affordable childcare to all but here’s a few bob towards it, is just going to mean that mothers - and it will largely be mothers - will have to leave the workplace and their careers, as they simply will not be able to afford to work and put their children into childcare without children’s allowance or the childcare supplementary payment. There will be a new kind of poverty in this country. People will be sitting in grand properties funded by the greedy bankers and looking out at the world because they will not be able to afford to go outside the door. It was a low move to take mortgage interest relief from people - again it affects the young families. If you add up this take, along with the child benefits, the income levies and the PRSI levies alone - families are going to notice a huge decrease in their monthly take-home pay.
In my opinion the Government is not looking to be re-elected next time round. They want to hand over the reins as things have got so bad and they are now unable to cope. Come June - it will be interesting to see who is going to vote for the Government parties in the local elections. People are so hurt now and so down about their finances and the decisions that they have taken on the strength of what they were earning last year. People are feeling desperate. I for one would not like to be a FF councillor canvassing this week as I think the local councillors are going to take the wrath of the Joe Soaps who will be earning €6,000 less next January than he was last January as a result of budget cuts alone. Local councillors will have to distance themselves from this or they will not have a hope of being elected or re-elected this time around. The budget came at an unfortunate time for those councillors trying to keep their roles on the council and one would wonder why the government didn’t hold off until after the elections.
But would any other party do any better? It is hard to know. How do you undo such huge mistakes of the past without really suffering. It just seems so unfair that innocent citizens are paying for the mistakes of the rich and powerful. The ordinary people are the ones picking up the pieces while the powerful are either working on in their well-paid jobs are reaping the rewards of massive pensions.
We may be losing a minister in Kilkenny this month too which is not a good thing for our county - however, can we really justify junior ministers in this day and age? We have to look at the world very differently now - all these little luxuries are costing us money we can ill-afford
