Ireland Calling
by John SpainRSS 
Recent Posts
- Abortion reform Irish style - Women still have no rights over their own bodies, continue to travel to the UK for procedure
- We’re total abortion hypocrites - proposals for new legislation were laughable
- Catch 22 for Irish abortion law - navigating Ireland’s rigid, Catholic influence legal framework and Savita Halappanavar’s case
- The late Baroness Margaret Thatcher had her good points
- Letters from the tax man - the mounting cost of Ireland's property tax and running the country
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We had known it was coming, because the amount had been well flagged in advance to prepare us for the worst. But even so, to hear Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan spell out the detail of the cutbacks that lie ahead of us was still a shock last week.
We’ve been talking about budget deficits and billions in cutbacks for months now. In fact there has been so much talk, with no action, that an air of unreality had developed around our economic crisis.
Last week here we had a perfect example of this. The government was having an all day meeting to decide on the four-year program of draconian cutbacks that have to be implemented.
These cuts are going to mean a severe drop in the standard of living for everyone here. There will be heavy cuts in spending on all state services, even education and health, welfare, pensions and so on.
