OPINION:The botched Budget has unleashed a wave of payback-time anger along with widespead political opportunism, writes Quentin Fottrell
BEFORE THE great medical card climbdown of 2008, this domestic was only ever going to get worse.
The white noise, overwrought emotions, fire-and-brimstone boil-in-the-bag language and manipulative media coverage, where the sick and indignant were wheeled out in front of cameras, earned the Opposition easy political points and allowed the public to settle their own deeply personal scores - scores related to issues like negative equity and payback for it all having gone horribly wrong. And losing general elections.
Former Fianna Fáil TD Joe Behan abandoned ship in his "life stand" in a blaze of glory, telling a newspaper that he received thousands of supportive letters, e-mails, phone calls and texts.
The elderly didn't deserve to be hit in such a slapdash way, but there was no limit to the outpouring of Great Hurt on their behalf. Chairman of the Campaign for a Real Public Health Service Jim Cronin said at a rally in Cork last Saturday the stress and worry alone of losing medical cards could "kill elderly people".
The Greens and Independents were contaminated the moment they went into Government with Fianna Fáil. The medical card was also a get-out-of-jail-free card. Withdrawing support for the Government, Independent TD Finian McGrath was a grandstanding maverick: "They just don't get it. How hurt and how offended our elderly senior citizens are."
Green Party TD Paul Gogarty demonstrated some nifty diplomatic skills: "While the vast majority of over-70s are not affected by the revised medical card scheme, the news has caused our elderly much pain and distress."
Sure, the Budget failed to address the fattened calf of the public sector, cut the budget for the Equality Authority and Irish Human Rights Commission, and will further erode consumer confidence with income tax levies. But the medical cards unleashed a two-faced hydra: doe-eyed concern for the "vulnerable" but also an opportunistic gnashing of teeth . . . check out that woman on The Late Late Show who said it may be not very PC but what about the immigrants with medical cards. (It wasn't long before that reared its ugly head.)
There has been no limit to the abuse heaped on the Government before Tuesday's U-turn on the medical card to cover 95 per cent of over-70s. Butchers! Savages! Cowards! Disgusting! Shameful! Callous! Brutal! To explain or defend it was tantamount to an assault on the elderly.
The means-testing appeared indefensible, despite the jammy deal the original 2001 measure gave the medical profession. Opposition leaders were loath to mention the fact that the Budget proposal included 70 per cent of card holders, even though that could have helped allay fears among the elderly.
In Monday's Irish Times, Enda Kenny wrote: "This is the first full frontal attack on workers, on education, on healthcare and on older people. Last week's Budget wrote an end to the myth of Fianna Fáil as the party that cares for the vulnerable and the elderly." He added that this "failure of trust is a stab to the heart of a society". Under the circumstances, the violent, incendiary language he used to demonise the Government decision, while certainly a bad one, was startling.
Kenny added: "The fears of the elderly have been heightened by every broadcast by this Government. I know this because I visited a nursing home over the weekend. Every resident there believes they're going to lose their medical card. The loss of faith they're experiencing is devastating."
I'm not sure what's worse, adding to the fear and loathing with more sensationalism, squeezing in a politically motivated post-Budget trip to a nursing home or using the most hyperbolic word in tabloid journalism: "devastating".
You cannot give a yapping, fluffy puppy to someone, then take it back. Well, you can under Brian Cowen's enforced act of "self-sacrifice", a contradiction in terms, but retrieving the mutt is a far greater sin than never giving it in the first place.
That said, the public was out for Fianna Fáil's blood long before this fiasco. There is an appetite for change. Judging by the politicised, impassioned grey-haired protesters who have been so effective in speaking up on their own behalf, that change may yet come.
The medical card shenanigans were all the more surprising from the "cute hoors" at Fianna Fáil, which gave free public travel to pensioners. That cost the public coffers virtually nothing - assuming pensioners avoid rush hour - but it worked its magic right up to the 2007 general election. Many voters regarded free travel as magnanimous a gift in the same way they viewed Fine Gael's one-time proposal for tax on children's shoes as an unforgiveable "stab to the heart of society" - to quote Enda Kenny.
Charlie Haughey must be smiling down from above that his free travel pass came back to bite his political successors so spectacularly. Iarnród Éireann said about 1,000 pensioners travelled to Dublin yesterday on early morning buses and trains to protest. This generation, many of which were Fianna Fáil's grassroots, is too often patronised and ignored. Why should they be done out of a street party outside Leinster House? Why should they not be the ones to flex their own political muscle?
And, besides, it was such a beautiful day.