You had lots to give away, Michael, so where was the passion?

AFTER seven years of austerity things have never looked better for the country – so goes the Government’s rhetoric. But you wouldn’t have known it from the tortuous atmosphere in the Dáil as Budget 2016 was unveiled.

Michael Noonan’s familiar see-saw accent did not so much ring through the House as float feebly through the air, his hands uncharacteristically shaking as he clutched the pre-prepared speech, upon which his eyes were steadily fixed.

A sea of faces from the Opposition benches stared at his bent head blankly, seemingly detaching themselves from the droning technical details and projected figures.

Only Michael McGrath, Fianna Fáil’s f i nance spokesman, seemed to care as he busily punched away at his calculator and made heavy use of his highlighter pen.

There was much talk about the resilience of the Irish people, the spirit of 1916 and the perils of never-to-be-repeated boom-and-bust cycles but Noonan’s tired tenor made them sound more like empty platitudes rather than the sincerely held convictions of an influential minister who maintains he is steering an economy around a corner from the economic doldrums i nto the sunny uplands of prosperity.

The Government benches, who valiantly tried not to look too smug as the reductions to USC were announced, became visibly excited at the mention of the reduction in motor tax for commercial vehicles.

The enthusiastic cheers of ‘hear, hear’ suggested that, if auctioneering and the licensed trade are the career mainstay of many Fianna Fáil party members, haulage, trucking and commercial machinery are Fine Gael’s.

Or perhaps it’s just that party members intend to travel in convoy and get the hell out of Dodge should the next election campaign go pear-shaped. However, that seemed unlikely yesterday. Instead, an extended road trip might be an option too for the thousands of homeless whose plight was loosely referred to at the very end of the Finance Minister’s address.

‘You got a problem?’, asked Mr Noonan in his one and only burst of spontaneity.

His schoolmasterish intervention was addressed at socialist TD Ruth Coppinger who was loudly chattering with Labour’s John Halligan, high up on the Opposition benches.

‘What a disgrace,’ said Coppinger, curling her mouth in disgust. ‘Commercial housing… brilliant… no social housing.’

Paul Murphy, who sat beside her, raised his eyes at the mention of NAMA’s aim to deliver 20,000 residential units before the end of 2020. ‘That will really help t he homeless,’ he remarked sardonically.

‘Will you ever stay quiet,’ whined Ceann Comhairle Seán Barrett. But if Noonan’s speech was less a tour de force than a tour de fatigue, it was still greeted by an eager round of applause from the Government back benches, the first heard in the Chamber on Budget Day since the cold winds of the recession blew in.

Labour’s Brendan Howlin then rose to his feet, maintaining the newly acquired momentum with a performance that could only be described as a stunning exercise in bumptious self-congratulation and backslapping fervour. The Opposition TDs may argue that the Budget was an attempt, as Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty put it, to preserve ‘the happiness and prosperity of the top 14 per cent... the elite … the multinationals and the high earners’, but Howlin had the bonhomie of one handing out goodies to everyone in the Late Late Show’s audience.

He kicked off by protesting hotly about the misunderstandings that have swirled around the Coalition. ‘It has become popular to say that under this Government inequality has risen. This is simply not true,’ he thundered. ‘Yes it has,’ piped Coppinger, who seemed to have appointed herself chief Government adversary for the day.

While traditionally Labour has talked about protecting the vulnerable through safeguarding social welfare, its emphasis has now shifted to, as Howlin said, ‘making work pay’.

‘The best weapon against inequality is not the social welfare system, it is decent jobs and fair wages,’ he declared.

FEW would disagree with him, but an increase of 50c in the minimum wage and the modest USC reductions for the low paid might do little over the coming year to release the vice-like grip of the welfare trap.

This ‘giveaway’ budget contains no new taxes other than a hike on a packet of cigarettes, a move greeted without a murmur of dissension compared to the uproar that such increases invited in years gone by.

The €3 increase in the old-age pension seems modest, while the increments in the budgets for Health, Education, Childcare and Housing were also modest improvements – not remedies.

Budget 2016 may put some money back in our pockets, but it is not a cure for anything.