There is a general gloom about government, more specifically, about the members of the Cabinet. I do not get a sense that the public are experiencing the same sense of despair and despondency. The reason is simple; no one has spelt out in detail the financial crisis this country is facing. Is the news that upsetting that the sensitive ears of the "little people" should not be made aware of it? The public backlash at the hair shirt measures in the budget are taking place in the absence of any real sense or understanding of the scale of the economic problems facing the country.

I am one of the little people without understanding. I do get a sense that things are not perfect but they are a far cry from the 1980's. I have been asking if the scale of the problem is such that, if it was not dealt with, Ireland could find itself in the throes of a depression, not seen since the depression of the 1930's.

To get an idea of that chapter in history all one has to do is look at what is the iconic image of the Great Depression. It was the photograph, taken by Dorothea Lange, of a woman living in a tent entitled, ‘migrant mother’. Dorothea Lange was a frequent visitor to Ireland and Clare in the 1950’s and, on one of these visits; she recounted the story of her most famous photograph. When asked of the lady in the picture, Dorothea Lange said that,

"I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tyres from her car to buy food".

People living in tents, on the roads into Ennis or Kilrush, feeding their children on road kill and stolen vegetables. I would like to think that is not the fate that awaits the county, if the government fails to introduce the cuts in spending it wants.

The full extent of the problem/ crisis/ abyss, whatever it is being called, has to be outlined to the Irish people. There has to be an understanding of why, for example, it is necessary to undo the gains achieved in education. This is like peeling up the motorways and saying that we will just have to lay them again.

I wonder if the opposition parties have any idea what is facing the country. From their conduct to date, it appears that they have a different view on this. The public and Fine Gael never thanked Alan Dukes for what became known as the Tallaght strategy, supporting the cutbacks of the Fianna Fail government in the 1980's and it is unlikely that they would even go as far as Terenure on this occasion .The long spells on the opposition benches, tainted with the memory of the savaging received from FF on the few times FG were in Government is powder FG have kept dry for years. But it is necessary to remind that no one does cuts like FG.

Perhaps it is time for a general election to spell out the extent of the crisis, The dynamic that existed at the time of the general election has disappeared. Dept of Finance figures projected growth rates of around 2% over the life time of the government. We are now in negative growth figures and facing a deficit of around 15 billion Euro. But the discussion that goes on in my head rules out the notion of a general election where the experience of the past, populist, "tell them what they want to hear" election rants doesn’t inform any one. The election rhetoric of cutting tax's, increasing services and get rid of the fat cats of bureaucracy, that takes place in the mayhem of a thousand false promises will not serve anyone. The public will not thank the party that brings about an election, and unless there is a greater understanding of the scale of the problem, the public will not thank the parties of Government. So I ask for the image that will give an understanding of the future facing the country. I only hope it will not be similar to Lange's image of the despair of a mother of seven living on the side of the road.