Gavan Reilly: Most vulnerable left behind in the race to buy votes

It could be the commentator’s curse – and it would hardly be unusual for circumstances to change in the hours before the Budget is totally signed off – but all of the weekend briefing suggested that in the midst of a giveaway Budget, the disabilities sector will be left effectively empty-handed. By the time Roderic O’Gorman increases core funding for creches and spends more on asylum accommodation, there’s no additional money left for Anne Rabbitte to administer.

So never mind the idea of recruiting more therapists to start working through the enormous backlogs of people in need of therapies, it seems there may not even be any increase in the Budget for using private psychologists to assess children in the first place. (That, incidentally, is something Simon Harris said he was pursuing when interviewed in New York merely nine days ago.)

It’s hardly a surprise, though, that the vulnerable would be sacrificed at the altar of political expediency. All of the announcements in the coming days will boast about the extra money being given back to hard-press workers, the increased welfare payments to the squeezed middle at times of high cost; bonuses to child benefit; increases in maternity benefit; hiking the tax cut-off point; cutting USC; more money for pensioners; more money for homebuilding; more tax cuts for renters. More Gardai. More teachers. More roads. More buses. More. More. More.

It’s all centre-ground, common denominator stuff, all hoping to appease the everyday voter ahead of the election, however far around the corner it’s coming.

And yet, after last year’s measures, did you – the archetypical, centre-ground Meath Chronicle reader – feel any better off? Once the energy credits had been burned through, or the schoolbooks provided by the school instead of your local newsagent, did you feel you had much more money in your pocket? Did the €800-odd in income tax cuts for the average worker give you a material lift? Or do you feel like public services are in much better shape?

Yet if you make small talk with someone in government and ask them what measures they are fondest of during their time in office, it’s the little ones that don’t cost much, but make an enormous difference to those who get it. Someone over the weekend mentioned the initiative three years ago to contribute €500 towards the cost of wigs for cancer patients. The overall cost is about €1.5m a year but the difference it makes to recipients is priceless.

The difficulty in making a case for those people is a disheartening, cynical, but sadly true one: no matter how much the unfortunate or underprivileged yearn for better public services, there are very few votes in directly intervening to improve matters for minorities. And there are far more votes in splashing the cash, giving people back some more of their own money.

And yet here’s the great irony: families in situations like ours, with two good wages and sufficient money to pay for therapies for a child with a disability, are probably better off taking the government’s tax cuts and sorting ourselves out. Whither those whose tax cuts are not good enough to pay for private treatment?