Dublin - The Irish are bracing themselves for the unkindest cuts of all, with the first budget since the demise of the Celtic Tiger boom due for release Tuesday. With the Department of Finance releasing its worst set of pre- budget figures in three decades, few expect to escape the pain of the most stringent cuts since the dark recessionary days of the 1980s.
As receipts and expenditure figures from the Department of Finance showed that the government was expected to take in 1.1 billion euros (1.49 billion dollars) less in taxes in 2009 than in 2008, there were suggestions that welfare benefits, such as child allowances, were going to be means-tested.
"If they touch the children's allowance, I'll be out there on the streets," one Dublin woman told Ireland's national broadcaster RTE last week.
Experts agree however that it is unlikely that such sacred welfare cows are going to be touched. According to Donall Gannon, partner at top accounting firm KMPG, a good case could be made for bringing in means-testing.
"But," he says, "there would be murder over it. I can just imagine the carry-on in the call-in radio shows. It's a political issue because the money is for the child. I would be surprised if it were changed."
Another possibility, much more likely to materialise, is the doubling of registration fees for third-level education with the re- introduction of fees also being discussed.
Over 5,000 students demonstrated in the streets of Cork Thursday against the doubling of registration fees, which now stand at 900 euros. The measure is looking increasingly likely as university chiefs concede that colleges are facing deficits of about 45 million euros.
While students from less well-off backgrounds will continue to receive government grants, such a measure is set to alienate the middle classes who reaped the benefits of the Celtic Tiger boom and its low taxes.
The Economic and Social Research Institute has warned that tax increases will be unavoidable in the budget. Many economists are predicting that there will be tax increases for those in the highest tax band.
Potentially more serious to the less well-off, are cuts to the health service, already ailing under the strain of bureaucracy and management failures by the Health Service Executive (HSE), the body responsible for the operation of Ireland's health service.
"Slash and burn," is the expression used by Irish Hospital Consultant Association (IHCA) assistant secretary general Donal Duffy to describe the cost-cutting measures aimed at saving 118 million euros.
"It's going to have a serious impact on the frontline services and anyone who says any different has no idea of the reality of what's being planned," he told the Irish Examiner newspaper Friday.
Meanwhile there is political capital to be gained in recessionary times, which opposition Fine Gael party leader Enda Kenny illustrated by announcing that he was to take a "symbolic" 5 per cent pay cut in 2009.
Kenny was speaking at the introduction of Fine Gael's budget proposals, which include 5,000 not-so-symbolic voluntary redundancies in the civil service. The party is also suggesting a freeze on pay rises for those in the public sector earning more than 50,000 euros a year. The proposal would also freeze regular incremental pay hikes.
It is not this group that most fears the budget, but the ever- increasing numbers of the unemployed, many of them casualties of the collapse in the construction sector. The Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin is on record as promising that other departments would "feel the pinch" to ensure that her department did not have to make any cutbacks.
Hanafin has said that she did not envisage any savings being found in any welfare programmes at budget time. With unemployment expected to reach 180,000 next year, many will be relying on her to keep that promise at Tuesday's budget announcement.
