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“€6 billion cut and run,” headlines the Irish Independent, the day after Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan presented the severest budget in the history of the state. The accompanying cartoon of Lenihan torturing a taxpayer on the rack, saying “We’ll just have to make things stretch further”, sums up the mood. “A savage budget,” the Dublin daily resumes, “will take €3,000 from the average household. Income tax rises, cuts to child benefit, higher petrol prices and a string of other charges will leave low and middle-income families much worse off.” With the EU/IMF €85 billion bailout for the economically stricken nation conditional on the budget getting passed through parliament, Ireland’s unpopular coalition squeezed by on a vote of 82 to 78, the daily notes.
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