Irish face a bleak winter as budget cuts take hold

By Fiona Smith Dec 10, 2010, 16:33 GMT

Dublin - Sharon Byrne is blind and lives on a disability pension of 196 euros (260 dollars) a week. She rents an apartment in Dublin which costs her 750 euros a week. Her rent allowance is 390 a month, with the shortfall coming from her disability benefit.

The Irish government's austerity budget for 2011 published December 7 will cut that benefit by 32 euros a month.

'It's a disgrace,' says Byrne. 'We don't have jobs and we can't get them. They should think more about people with disabilities. We have no choice but to rely on social welfare.'

The 2011 budget, the harshest in the country's history, contains 6 billion euros' worth of cuts and tax increases.

It is part of a four-year- austerity plan agreed with the EU and IMF before they approved an 85-billion-euro rescue package to bail out Ireland's banking system and address its sovereign debt crisis.

The swingeing cuts in the budget mean that the unemployed, carers and people on disability benefit like Byrne will be forced to look hard at every basic purchase.

'It's very hard to get by as it is now. The cuts to disability benefits mean we have to look again at everything we're spending, our bills, clothes, fuel, everything. It's going to be very hard to make ends meet,' Byrne says.

As the Irish parliament Thursday was passing the Social Welfare Bill, aimed at reducing social benefits by 4 per cent, people all over the country were queuing up in icy conditions to sign on for unemployment benefits.

'If you are on social welfare, it's just one thing after another,' says Tom from Cork, an unemployed father-of-two who doesn't want to give his full name.

He has been on various courses aimed at getting back to work, but with no luck so far. The unemployment rate in Ireland is now at 13.6 per cent

'I expected what was coming in the budget,' he says. 'I've been very broke for a long time now and it can't get much worse. So much is unfair about the social welfare system. It's not just people like me, but the self-employed who are now unemployed have a major problem getting any benefits.'

Others were checking their bank balances, fearing that the cuts had taken effect already.

'I'm sick of it,' says Elsie O'Leary, a single mother who works part-time. 'The cuts in children's allowance mean that my weekly payment is down from 245 euros to 217. I work as a waitress so it's not as if I'm well-paid. We're hoping that our wages of nine euros an hour will not be cut, but we don't know yet.'

O'Leary hopes that as a low-earner that she will be exempt from tax changes in the budget. 'I don't expect to pay any more tax, but they're saying everyone will be paying more tax now, so I'm not sure yet.'

She blames former prime minister Bertie Ahern for the perilous state of the country's finances.

'It all started with Bertie during the boom,' O'Leary said about Ahern, who stepped down in May 2008 just about the point when Ireland's economic news started turning sour.

'Brian Cowen was handed a poisoned chalice. Not that they have done much about it. And now we hear that the AIB bank is giving big bonuses to some of its staff,'

Teacher Irene Barry has two children and is the main wage earner in the family at the moment.

'I am going to be down 3,000 euros on my wages after this budget. Overall, over the last few years between the various levies and the raised taxes I have lost 20 per cent of my wages,' she said.

'Raising employer's Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) also means that it's harder for my husband to get a permanent job. So I am not impressed about that,' she said.

'I will also lose 20 euros a month on the children's allowance. So that's another thing I'm not impressed with.'

Most are not impressed by the budget despite Finance Minister's protestations that 'those who can pay the most will pay the most.'

'It's theft,' says Jean Nelligan, an artist who lives in Cork. 'If you're a working person, you are part of the working class and this government is stealing from the working class.

'When you look around the world, you realise that this country is actually very rich, full of natural resources. We have both oil and gas off the Irish coast. These resources have been stolen from the people of this country. It's pure and utter theft.'