THE choreography of the past few weeks speaks to the confusion at the heart of this Government. Tuesday's emergency Budget, once flagged as the toughest, most brutal budget we would ever have seen, has become a gentler animal. Still tough, but not brutal.

That deficit target of 9.5 per cent, trumpeted so confidently a month or so ago, has drifted out towards 11 per cent. There is no longer any talk of public sector reform (not that there was much), or public sector wage cuts; social welfare, the biggest chunk of the spending budget, will remain untouched; privatisation does not a get a look-in.

The cuts in government spending, such as they are, will come from deferring projects under the National Development Plan and by trimming frontline services.

If Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan have a big idea, it appears to be this: raise taxes, because the taxpayers won't complain too loudly. And their secondary idea is even simpler: load those tax increases on the "wealthy".

Precisely at the point where we need a Budget that is focussed solely on what's best for the economy, it looks like we will be given a budget that has been stress tested for domestic political fallout, not economic credibility.

It will, however, take days and even weeks to assess the full impact of Tuesday's announcements. The first days will be all about spin, with the Government faithful hailing its vision and balance, while the Opposition howl about missed opportunities. There may well be a bewildering array of measures (the same mentality that gave us such a dog's dinner of a Budget in October is still at large), there will be plenty of promises about what will happen next, and there will be some crowd-pleasing culling of a few junior ministers.

The local spin will be matched by the spin from Brussels: no matter what Lenihan says, it would be a real surprise if his EU colleagues did not praise him. Jean Claude Trichet, the governor of the European Central Bank, can also be expected to pat him on the back.

The EU and the ECB need Ireland to stabilise, and will do everything in their power to aid that stabilisation with fine words, because if they fail they will have to find hard cash.

Those early expressions of confidence may encourage the international markets to give the Budget a preliminary thumbs-up and for a few days we may believe that the world has turned and that Lenihan has saved us from catastrophe. But the real reviews will be written in May and June, not April.

There is a chance, of course, that Lenihan and Cowen will defy all expectations and actually deliver a Budget that slashes day-to-day Government spending, kickstarts the reform of the public sector and delivers a privatisation timetable for State-owned assets. And a chance, too, that pigs might fly.

It is also unlikely that the two Brians will deliver genuine stimulus for an economy that is on its knees: there could be sectional interest bail-outs -- a dig-out for car retailers, some relief for the construction sector, a fiddle with VAT rates -- but no real stimulus.

There may be yet another attempt to stabilise the banks, with talk of an asset management company to take the bad debts off their books. In theory that could be good, but everything will depend on the pricing of those bad loans. Who would put money on the taxpayer getting a good deal? Or on repentant bankers discovering altruism?

Cowen, whose conservatism has delayed a swift resolution to the banking crisis, also appears to have convinced Lenihan that he has no choice but to tax the economy back to health -- an implausible approach, and one that Lenihan himself rejected some months ago, but one that will generate far less hostility than a genuine assault on current government spending.

Stephen Collins, The Irish Times' respected political editor, wrote yesterday that the Budget would be a "a test of whether our democracy is capable of responding in a spirit of solidarity to the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, or whether sectional interest will prevail over the common good".

It is a fair point, but unfortunately, those sectional interests represented by the public sector trade unions have already prevailed before Lenihan stands up to deliver his speech.

It is hard to decide whether the surrender to the public sector unions has been driven by fear or simply conditioned by 20 years of brain-softening social partnership, but this Government's refusal to face them down by launching a serious, concerted attack on public sector spending has hobbled its budgetary planning.

The surrender reaches beyond the public sector workers and into the biggest spending department of them all -- social welfare. The cry of the moment is to protect the vulnerable, but few are prepared to argue that the vulnerable will be best protected by a recovering, not collapsing, economy.

When Danny McCoy, of the employers body Ibec, suggested a cut in welfare payments he was howled down; Dan Boyle, the Green Party Senator, demanded his head in a ludicrous speech to the Senate.

McCoy's suggestion, however, was not just practical, but essential. The vulnerable will not be protected if we bankrupt the economy, they will be brutally exposed. Their protection depends on putting order on the public finances and breathing life -- or the prospect of life -- into the economy.

Those who claim to have their interests at heart are simply ignoring reality. They want to believe that Ireland's problems can be solved by taking everything from the "wealthy" (which these days seems to mean anyone with more money than you), or by loading up "carbon taxes" (whatever happened to the idea that carbon taxes would not involve any net increases in the tax burden?) while maintaining Ireland's social welfare allowances even when prices are falling.

The same people do not believe that more workers should be brought into the tax net -- they are also vulnerable and must be protected -- and talk incessantly about the billions that were made in the boom, while ignoring the destruction of wealth that has taken place in the past two years.

It is unpopular to say it, as McCoy discovered, but that does not mean it is wrong: we can no longer afford our social welfare bill while simultaneously allowing a third of the working population to pay no income tax. So take your pick: broaden the tax base by making every worker pay some income tax, or cut social welfare by the amount that prices fall.

Chances are that the two Brians will do neither, though they might promise to do both at some future date. Instead they will load the "wealthy" with higher taxes, because in the language of the times, they have the "ability to pay". The truth, though, is that taxes will rise because the Government does not have the ability, or the courage, to cut.

If people on the higher rate of tax genuinely represented the country's wealthy elite, the argument might have some merit, but higher rate taxpayers are a very ordinary collection of people. Part of the price of excluding so many from the tax net is that the higher rate kicks in very early, sweeping up a third of the workforce.

As a quick fix, it is easy to see the merit of higher income taxes, because they deliver an instant return but the real test of the Government's approach comes a few months down the line.

Cowen believes, apparently, that once the tax increases are digested, confidence will slowly return to the Irish consumer. His Government thinks that fear of those tax increases has caused the collapse in consumer spending and confidence, and the reality of those increases will help restore that confidence.

We'll see soon enough. It is possible, however, that fear of job losses has played a larger role in the decline of consumer confidence, and that the destruction in value of people's homes and, for those in the private sector, pensions has made them feel miserably poor, no matter the size of their wage packet.

Tax increases may drive even more people from the shops and the economy ever deeper into recession. It is unlikely that the reality of Tuesday's increases will drive away the fear of future tax hikes. As opinion poll after opinion poll demonstrates, the public have no confidence in this Government's ability to steer a way through the recession, so the public will not believe that this Budget marks a turning point. They will fear for worse.

So when the dust settles and the spin recedes, the real impact of Tuesday's measures will become apparent. It may take a few days, or a few weeks, but if Cowen and Lenihan have chosen the soft option of higher taxes and higher borrowing, they will be found out and we will pay the price, no matter what Wednesday's headlines tell you.

- Alan Ruddock