Introducing his budget last month, Charlie McCreevy was keen to play down the barely concealed contempt for the poor which has been a feature of his term of office, writes Fintan O'Toole. With an election in the offing, the caring sharing image needed refurbishment.
Thus, there was a new emphasis on the need "to promote social inclusion", on "this Government's commitment to supporting the position of our old-age pensioners" and on "a major leap forward in protecting the vulnerable in society".
Since then, of course, the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs has been running a highly personalised ad campaign to promote this new image of generosity.
As the new social welfare rates come into effect, however, it is becoming clear that some of the most vulnerable people in Irish society may actually be worse off this year.
What is truly shocking, moreover, is that this state of affairs is largely accidental. It comes about, not because of a deliberate policy decision but because of carelessness. This tells us everything we need to know about the order of priorities in 21st century Ireland.
It may seem ludicrous to suggest that people could be worse off when they are getting more money. Social welfare recipients did undoubtedly get modest but significant increases in the budget. In most cases, the increase is in or around €10 - the cost of a taxi ride home from a nice restaurant for some of us or of an entire family's main meal for others. There is, however, an iron fist hidden inside this velvet glove.
For many people living on social welfare, a significant part of their real income is the medical card that entitles them to basic health care which they could not otherwise afford. For pensioners, people drawing disability benefits and carers, this is especially important because medical expenses tend to hang over them both as a present reality and as a future threat.
The system itself is vicious: apart from the over-70s who now all qualify for medical cards, individuals with an income of over £5,200 a year have to pay every time they visit their GP. A married couple with two children, earning a little over £9,000 a year does not qualify for a medical card.
For people on social welfare, the avoidance of this poverty trap is one of the small mercies of life. Or at least it was. Since the beginning of this month, many people on social welfare are suddenly finding that the crumbs they have been given from the Government's table are potentially poisoned.
Quite simply, the Government seems not to have noticed that the much-trumpeted social welfare increases now put many of the people who are getting them above the limit for the medical card. I assume this is accidental because, when I rang the Departments of Health and of Social, Community and Family Affairs yesterday to inquire about it, both seemed initially taken aback by my query.
Until this year, the general practice has been for social-welfare payments and medical-card limits to be closely co-ordinated, so that anyone on social welfare is automatically entitled to a card.
Last year, for example, the carers allowance was €112.37 and the medical card income limit for a single person living with his or her family was €113.01, so the man or woman caring for an elderly relative at home qualified without question for the medical card.
The rate of unemployment benefit or disability allowance, at €108.56, was also comfortably within the €113.01 cut-off point. Similarly, the invalidity and contributory old age pensions for a single person living alone, at €134.59, were well within the relevant medical card limit of €144.
The new rates, however, have changed all this. The carers allowance, for example, has gone up to €122.60, but the new medical card income limit is just €117, so the carer has lost his or her automatic entitlement.
The unemployment and disability payments for a single person are now €118.80, compared to a limit of €117. The invalidity and old-age pensions are €147.30, well above the limit of €144.
The contributory widow's pension is now, ludicrously, just €0.80 above the medical card limit.
For all of these people, something they had as of right is now at the discretion of the Department of Health. Technically, the medical card limits are "guidelines" which can be breached and the assumption must be that the discretion will be used humanely.
There are, nevertheless, serious problems with this state of affairs. A vast burden of unnecessary worry has been placed on the shoulders of vulnerable people, many of whom have trouble gaining access to the system in the first place.
A similar burden has been placed on the administrative structures by pushing huge numbers of people into a category where their entitlements have to be assessed rather than simply assumed. And bitter experience has shown that where discretion exists it will, in a small number of cases, be used badly.
It seems unlikely that all of this is part of some Machiavellian manoeuvre to effectively claw back the social welfare increases. Much more probably, it is simply an expression of the supreme unimportance in Government thinking of the 890,000 citizens who depend on social welfare.
They just don't matter enough for proper attention to be paid to the things that affect their daily lives.