Budget cuts aim to reshape Ireland

Finance Minister Michael Noonan presented first budget delivery yesterday

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Organized through Facebook, protestors from the new Occupy the Dail movement staged a protest on Tuesday. Bearing a coffin draped with the Irish flag, they are pictured occupying the Department of Agriculture.

Photo by Sasko Lazarov

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Finance Minister Michael Noonan said in his first budget delivery on Tuesday that the government is trying to repair a decade of disastrous policy.

“The people of Ireland have paid a very high price for this mismanagement of the economy.  Personal wealth has been destroyed, thousands of people are sinking into poverty, emigration has returned and unemployment is far too high,” he said.

“The task of this government is to regain control over Ireland's fiscal and economic policies, to grow the economy again and to get people back to work."

The Republic’s 2012 budget, seeking to create jobs and at the same time make savings of €3.8 billion, was released for the first time over two days in the Dail (Parliament) and was described by main opposition public expenditure and reform spokesperson Sean Fleming as a “triumph of spin over substance.”

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Fianna Fail’s Fleming said the Fine Gael/Labor coalition is intent on “protecting their friends and cronies in high places” while placing charges on the less well-off.

There wasn’t even a hint that budgets in the next few years will less punishing than the 2012 which has been called the budget from hell. Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin said Ireland’s budgetary system is old-fashioned and would be radically overhauled, with emphasis on planning for three-year terms.

Even before Noonan gave his main budget delivery, day-to-day spending cuts which will add up to €1.4 billion across a range of state services were unveiled by Howlin in the first leg of Budget 2012.

Although there was no increase in income tax, families faced up to being €1,000-a-year-worse off under his measures, with slashes in welfare allowances for families with more than two children, reductions in back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance, a cut of six weeks -- from 32 to 26 -- in cold weather fuel allowances for the elderly, and security services downgrading that means 31 Garda (police) stations will be closed.

The Department of Health is taking the biggest cut of €543 million, followed by Social Protection with an adjustment of €475 million.

Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has to increase registration fees for third-level students by €250 despite an election pledge not to do so but he has protected the pupil teacher ratio in primary and secondary education, with the exception of private schools.

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