What you have to wonder is how anyone, anywhere thought it was a good idea, politically, practically or humanely. But somehow, it took until Tuesday night on Prime Time for the Government to understand that it was not a good idea to halve the money we give to young disabled people.

To save pocket change in the grand scheme of things (€6m next year) a Labour minister in a Labour Coalition Government was seemingly willing to target those who everyone agrees are absolutely the most vulnerable people in our society. The measures have now been paused after widespread revulsion, but it is still worth considering what this incident tells us about our Government and our society.

You might have witnessed it all fall apart on Tuesday night. Michael Noonan was cramped into RTE's Dail studio with Richard Crowley and Michael McGrath. The fact that there was a wooden-looking backdrop in the cramped studio added to the air of it being something akin to a sweatroom.

Noonan certainly looked under pressure and when he was asked about the cuts to disabled young people he just crumbled. He foolishly decided to talk when he clearly did not know what he was talking about. As the person in charge of finance in the country and who is also part of the Economic Council (of teachers) -- the four horsemen who are increasingly the real Cabinet -- Noonan displayed a frightening lack of understanding of not just life and people, but also of finance and politics.

A personal note first. I hate it when people refer to my child and other people's children as 'Down Syndrome children'. I'm not gone all politically correct now that I am in a minority myself but I think most people these days are educated enough to know that people with disabilities, and indeed their parents, don't like to be completely defined by it and that the nice thing to say is 'children with Down Syndrome'.

Nowadays, the only people you expect to hear referring to anyone as a 'Down Syndrome child' are older people and maybe people who have very little education.

So I was surprised that Michael Noonan, as an English teacher and the Minister for Finance, did not express himself better. But then I suppose he is of an age where people tend to be less enlightened about the disabled and have what the rest of us would regard as slightly old-fashioned views.

I hesitate to use the word 'ignorance'. However, Noonan did go on to demonstrate ignorance with his defence of the disability cuts. Bear in mind here that it is hard to know what Noonan was trying to say exactly because he didn't know himself.

But roughly he said that in the case of children, for example, with Down Syndrome, the Government had had representations from parents who thought that these young people should not be given their own money from the age of 16 because they were too young.

Michael McGrath asked the pertinent question. Had parents really asked to have their children's welfare payments cut from the €188 they were getting under disability allowance to the €71 domiciliary care allowance for two years from 16 to 18?

Noonan, who was becoming more confused, said they had, because there was a concern that the 16-year-olds might be running wild with the €188, or "getting into difficulties", as he put it. So instead of getting the €188 a week from the age of 16, the Government had decided to leave these kids on the domiciliary care allowance, which is €71, until they were 18.

Now I was sitting at home wondering how many children with Down Syndrome are running wild with their €188 quid a week at the age of 16. I think poor Mr Noonan was perhaps getting mixed up with kids who were getting disability allowances for other reasons.

And of course, there are kids out there on disability allowance at 16 who are possibly troubled and around the streets. But there are also severely disabled children, who are far, far more compromised than the kids with Downs that Noonan talked about, from whom this measure was merely stealing much-needed money.

When he was asked about the cutting of the disability allowance in general for young people aged between 18 and 24 from €188 down to €100 until they are 21 and then €144 until they are 24, poor Mr Noonan was getting more flustered and less convinced. This was to treat them the same as all jobseekers, he said.

To which Richard Crowley made the simple point: but they are not the same. As much as we would all wish that our children with special needs would be jobseekers, many of them won't ever seek a job or get a girlfriend or boyfriend or buy a car or a house.

Finally, Noonan muttered that perhaps this issue was worth looking at again in the Social Welfare Bill. I presume that after the show he went away and freaked out with someone for leaving him exposed like that on live TV.

But the really frightening thing is why no one had had this conversation before. It looked on TV as if it took Noonan just two minutes to compute that the disability cuts made no sense, that he didn't actually understand it and that it was probably a bad idea. So how come then, between the Cabinet and the Economic Council (of teachers)

and everyone else, no one had identified this messy timebomb? How come it didn't jump out at them before they put it out there? Is this Government really that bad at politics and at understanding real life?

The answer is that no, it probably isn't. But you see, when you are being driven by an overall sense of mission, things that might not have seemed okay suddenly start looking okay as long as they fit into your mission. And clearly the mission in this Budget was not to touch Croke Park and not to touch next year's €300m in increments to public-sector workers, as well as not to compromise Kenny, Noonan and Gilmore on some of their broader election promises.

Once something was in line with that mission, it was clearly okay. Clearly, the real Cabinet -- the four horsemen -- were blinded to everything except their fear of the unions and of being exposed themselves. So they were able to dehumanise people like the disabled and think of them as mere numbers -- because they were being driven by a higher power.

The reality is probably as follows. This is the third time that the civil servants in the Department of Social Protection tried to push through this "reform" of disability payments. Mary Hanafin did much the same thing and had to reverse it a day later. Eamon O Cuiv was apparently being encouraged to do it as well during his tenure.

To the civil servants, it was a just a reform, another cut to someone else that would save the axe coming near them. It took it getting into the light of the day, twice, for ordinary people to have to tell them that it was actually unpalatable.

What has been unattractive and enlightening about this whole incident too has been how Joan Burton has been so gleefully dumped on in the last week by her male colleagues and the suggestions doing the rounds that Joan's colleagues have enjoyed her discomfort, given how outspoken she has been in the past about various issues. There was a sense of revenge emanating strongly from Fine Gael on this.

In reality, Joan Burton is perhaps not the one we should be dumping on here. Mary O'Rourke mentioned the other night on the excellent Midweek that the Economic Council (of teachers) -- Kenny, Noonan, Howlin and Gilmore -- had gone through every aspect of the Budget. As far as we know they did. Last weekend.

It is also fair to say that the aforementioned teachers left it very late to look at most aspects of the Budget, with decisions then being made in a flurry at the last minute. It would also be fair to say that Joan Burton, and indeed her Labour colleagues, possibly got screwed by wily old politickers like Kenny and Noonan, not only in the whole Budget process, but in the whole Government process.

Burton was left with a situation where she was hamstrung by mad promises of no cuts in the rates of social welfare, no going near Croke Park and no increases in income tax, promises to which the Economic Council (of teachers), even including Gilmore, were party.

So she's left hanging in the wind, as minister in charge of one of the biggest-spending departments, in a situation where she has to go around to all these various vulnerable groups cutting bits and pieces. So the elderly get some, lone parents get some, kids get some and the disabled get some.

There is no doubt that Burton was not happy about this, but what else could she do, having been painted into a corner? If Burton was to tell the truth, she would surely admit that the best way to cut the social welfare budget would have been to cut a few quid off everyone, including general child benefit, instead of decimating the most vulnerable. But she wasn't allowed, because some of the Economic Council (of teachers) were presumably politically exposed.

You would also have to wonder if the trade-off for Burton getting the cuts for her department down from €700m or €800m to €475m was that she had to swallow making some unpalatable cuts.

Noonan had clearly signed off on all this without wanting to do too much about it and it was only when caught on Prime Time that he actually seemed to think about the reality of the cuts. And he promptly backed down, there and then. He was happy for Joan Burton and Labour to take the flak for cuts but once it touched off him, he backed down.

He only wanted to be out doing big giveaway Budgets and stimulating property and giving away interest relief and whatnot. Like his colleague Enda Kenny, Noonan does not seem to want to be around the bad news. He even made Howlin have the bad-news Budget on a different day, so as not to taint his own moment.

I'll tell you one thing. That was less than half-a-billion of cuts from Social Protection and it was savage. Where does the Economic Council (of teachers) expect Joan Burton to cut the next €1.5bn in scheduled cuts from her department, without it touching them and their crazy promises?

Much, much worse could be ahead for this dysfunctional Government unless they all start working together and the four teachers of the Apocalypse (well, three teachers and one union official) start listening to the actual Cabinet, rather than handing down diktats from their private chats.

- Brendan O'Connor

Originally published in