The mini is back in fashion.
But it’s not for everybody.
There were two very enthusiastic mini drivers in the Dáil on Tuesday – Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald and Labour’s Ivana Bacik.
The Taoiseach is not a fan.
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The other two don’t buy this. They say Micheál Martin has been flirting with the mini since the start of the year, only not very well.
At the start of Leader’s questions, Mary Lou tried to convince him to throw caution to the wind and embrace it. Then Ivana told him he has been rocking the mini in everything but name in recent months.
The Taoiseach is in complete denial.
Just get into it, she told him. “Call it what it is.”
A mini-budgie.
Or is it a duck?
“As the saying goes,” she began, trying to explain to a reluctant Micheál that he has already substantially invested in a mini-budgie. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might just be a duck.”
But unfortunately his mini-budgie is “a very lame duck, Taoiseach, very lame”.
The poor thing is limping because it was “cobbled together” by him and is now “incoherent”.
Rather like Micheál’s plan to dispense strategic aid to sectors impacted by the fuel crisis, as the two Opposition leaders put it yesterday.
It’s all mad.
Apparently Micheál is currently trying to kill his lame-duck mini-budgie by hitting it over the head with a rubber mallet, but Ivana is on to him.
“You’re playing whack-a-mole!”
So where has this violent carry-on with the mini-budgie he steadfastly refuses to recognise, not to mention the bockety duck, left us?
“It has left PAYE workers footing the bill.”
Which sounds like another kick in the teeth for the poor aul duck.
Ivana pleaded with the Taoiseach to be “more honest” and call the banjaxed duck what it actually is, “which is a mini-budget but released in segments. Call it what it is and let people then judge it on its merits”.
Oh. It’s a mini-budget. Pity.
Mary Lou McDonald also urged him to bring in an emergency budget.
But the Taoiseach insisted he doesn’t want anything to do with either Minnie Budget or her pal, Emergency Budget.
He introduced a traditional maxi-budget in October last year and there will be another maxi-budget this October and that’s that. In the meantime, there will be a “strategic approach” to sensibly targeting measures according to resources.
Listen to the people, urged Mary Lou. They want and need an emergency budget now.
The last maxi-budget was no good for working people and it only left them worse off. Expecting them to “cling on” until the next one in October is not only unfair to them but “it’s downright insulting”.
The Sinn Féin leader cited the credit union consumer sentiment index for April – which “lays bare the severity of the cost-of-living pressure on people, especially when it comes to soaring energy costs” – as evidence that an emergency mini-budget is needed now.
The Government’s reactive approach of “half measures” and “doing a bit here and there” hasn’t worked, she said.
It only moved to offer support to certain sectors when public anger led to protests.
She told the Taoiseach to spend some of the billions in the State coffers to give workers the financial relief they deserve and she told him the way to do it.
Not with any ordinary mini-budget, but with a Shinner mini-budget which includes energy credits, a €500 payment for people with disabilities, a permanent cut to the USC and “a suite of measures” to protect the most vulnerable”.
Just don’t mention the war.
Mary Lou didn’t.
Not for the first time, Micheál didn’t let her get away with that.
The war in the Middle East is creating “shocking constraints” on oil supplies and has sent fuel prices soaring across the world.
That would be the war “which you, somehow, managed not to mention”, he pointed out, before outlining the economic consequences of a global contraction of fuel supplies.
The Taoiseach accepted fully that families and households are under pressure as a result of this upheaval but, with the whole uncertainly around ending the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, “these are the realities facing every government around the world right now.”
He wondered why the Sinn Féin leader didn’t refer to any of that.
“It’s as if it doesn’t exist in your world.”
Then he listed the alleviation measures introduced in the October budget along with detail of the recent €750 million package to ease the pressure from escalating fuel prices.
Mary Lou McDonald briskly dismissed his argument.
“There was a cost-of-living crisis before the war on Iran.”
Then it was back to selling the Shinner mini-budget – the only serious plan to assist people in their time of need.
“Are you serious? Are you listening?”
Micheál was and replied that what he heard was a “something for everybody” plan and the cost of it could run to four or five billion euro.
Three billion, said Mary Lou.
“I’d say this is around five billion” countered the Taoiseach. His Government will have to target its resources before the main budget. “We don’t have money in the bottom of a drawer like you’re suggesting.”
No mini-budget from him so.
But Ivana Bacik, while recognising the massive global energy shock caused by the war, said officials in the Department of Finance are already “scrambling” to find one-off supports and energy “tweets” in what looked very much like a mini-budget scenario.
Why not just go ahead and introduce a proper package of measures for struggling households and not this lame-duck assortment of ad hoc measures produced under political pressure?
That proposal will not fly.
The Taoiseach was sure of that.
“We will not be introducing a mini-budget.”
Don’t rule out a few more mini-budgies in the air before October though.
