Why 'easy target' politics won't do

At a time when focus, clarity and confidence are required, Budget 2009 has delivered confusion, fear and exasperation. The medical card fiasco will certainly go down in the records of ham fisted budget decisions. Not only was it a bad decision, the time and energy expended in its defense is time utterly wasted by a Government that needs laser-like focus on the recovery of our economy.
Of course, plugging the vast hole created by plummeting Government revenues was never going to be easy but Brian Lenihan's choices reveal the hopes of a man - and indeed a nation - that tinkering here and there with a much trusted engine will generate enough throttle to surmount the steep hill of recession.
Farmers have felt the brunt of an 'easy target' budget. The relentlessness of the cuts were matched only by the addition of new taxes. Cutbacks in the Farm Waste Management Scheme and the Suckler Welfare Scheme, the suspension of the Early Retirement Scheme and the one per cent income levy show no signs of strategic thinking but, instead, an indiscriminate and rushed attempt to balance the books.
Even the culling of the 41 state agencies, a welcome move to streamline the excesses of our statutory-body culture, has less to do with smart Government planning and much more with a sense of panic setting in Government buildings
But, when the dust settles, perhaps the greatest - and so far least debated - failing of Budget 09 will be seen to be in education. The decision to permit the expansion of class sizes has sent shock waves through the teaching profession, but the shock does not yet seem to have come home to roost among the families of Ireland. No one disputes that education has been the bedrock of Ireland's economic transformation. Allowing the class of 2009 to become a more crowded place will surely rank as one of the most short sighted decisions ever by an Irish Government.
All this, of course, while the Budget failed to confront the real elephant in the room - a civil service bloated on the strength of our Celtic Tiger years and now completely unsustainable.
Denial, psychologists tell us, is the first stage of grief. The choices made by Ireland's first austerity budget in almost two decades - punishing the over 70s and the under 18s - tell us that as a Government and nation, we are still at the first stage of mourning the loss of our Celtic Tiger economy.