You’d be forgiven for thinking that this week’s Grassroots is going to be yet another rant about the filthy rich friends of Fianna Fáil, well it is and it isn’t.
Yes, it’s quite clear now that they are the untouchables, as they will never be prosecuted for dodgy planning, zoning, or unethical banking practices. Nor will they have to shell out their fair share of the tax burden as their ‘patriotic’ duty.
Equally, they will not have to wait ten months for a scan while a tumour eats them alive, nor will their ‘special education needs’ child have to sit in a class of 33, unable to receive the attention they need. They will never have to make the difficult lifestyle choice of choosing between a bag of coal or a cooked chicken. They will never have to worry about having their home repossessed because of unregulated lending practices by banks.
While this elite cohort of citizens enjoys the spoils of over a decade of the Government’s neo liberal policies, an equally exclusive club has been forming. These are the growing number of people falling into the poverty trap, enduring negative equity and debt, chronic illness due to poverty, depression and substance abuse, once again directly related to income poverty.
In any caring society, a Government, conscious of its social function and civic duty, would respond in kind. Budgets would be framed during such difficult global circumstances to reflect the changed economic picture but protect those most at risk during a recession.
The first task of the cabinet would be to itemise a set of ‘untouchables’, spending areas that cannot, under any circumstances, be cut because of the undue hardship such cuts would inflict on citizens and where cuts would represent a false economy, in terms of the short-term book balancing exercise versus the long term cost to the state of under-funding of certain plans or programmes.
Such untouchables might include for arguments sake, over 70’s medical cards (give a thing, take it back… ), school-class sizes, traveller support measures (well, they don’t vote and many of them never reach 70, so aren’t a burden as regards medical cards ), disadvantaged education measures and the incomes of those on the minimum wage.
Once Government sets out its stall with these untouchables, it can then proceed to deliver a fair and equitable budget in which those who can most afford it, pay their fair share in order to set the state up for an upturn in fortunes. Of course, hindsight is a wonderful gift, and Grassroots is sure that if Brian Lenihan knew he would be facing the wrath of fifteen thousand pensioners on Wednesday last, he would never have brought forward the medical card means test.
But the medical card protest is going to look like an ICA meeting in comparison with the venom that’s building up in parents, school-teachers and unions in relation to the education cuts. Batt O Keefe’s sniggering in the Dáil during the budget speech, and his subsequent performance on this week’s Prime Time will only serve to remind us that he really doesn’t give a toss about the future of our children.
It’s death by a thousand cuts for Government, and they deserve every wound. The first cut is the deepest, and this administration (for want of a better word ) will be long remembered even by Alzheimers’ sufferers, for their assault on our elderly. For the junior partners, it spells death to Harney’s neo con ideals, for the Greens, the end of innocence and the beginning of their coming of age in Irish Politics. What a let down they have been.
And while Labour and Fine Gael gloat as a result of their new-found resurgence in the polls, they will take full advantage over the coming weeks to try and inflict the mortal wound and bring the Government down. And what then? Do they really want to be in power? Who would want to govern this country at this time?
These are times that require true leadership and resolve. On the evidence of these last few weeks, there’s not much there that would inspire confidence in an electorate already badly served by politics. Having said that, we all voted for a low tax economy and all the parties have played auction politics for three elections now. We cannot expect low taxation and Scandinavian levels of public services, but we only expect miracles because we were promised them. The chickens are well and truly home and roosting.
