Ask not what your country can do for you

At the time of writing, there is much fear over what will be announced by Brian Lenihan in this afternoon"s budget. There have been weeks of warnings that the axe is going to fall - and that it"s going to fall hard.Fianna Fáil are finally, it seems, prepared to take the difficult decisions needed to try and keep the country financially afloat. They had little choice in the matter.And while other political parties are going to criticise the decisions, they too, share agreement, that something radical has to be done to keep funds coming in to the government coffers.The thing is it"s not just the political parties that know it, we all know it. We have all seen family members, friends, colleagues, lose their jobs; we have seen the dole queues stretch - and wonder will there still be enough money there in some months to pay the state"s ever growing social welfare bill. We have seen the figures: we know the tax take is down. We know there have to be cuts.Those who lived through the Swedish financial crisis of the early 1990s, say that the best way to counter complaints is to ensure that everyone suffers equally. At the moment, there is enormous disgruntlement among the public sector, who believe, since the introduction of the pensions levy, that they are being asked to carry the can. By this evening, there will be even more disgruntlement, as costs go up, through increased 'stealth taxes', and incomes go down, through increased levies.Maybe, however, we"ve just got to start accepting that"s how things need to be at the moment. Maybe too, we need to be more mature in our approach, and stop complaining as cutbacks affect public expenditure. Of course we"re not going to be happy about it - but where is the money to come from? It"s just not there. And we"re not the only country going through these problems.We are living in tougher times, and we are going to suffer: not just in the pocket, but in terms of the quality of the services provided for us. There will be potholes in more roads. Councils may even have to do what was done in the 1980s, when they could afford to light only one out of every three street lights in the country. There are going to be more children sitting in pre-fabricated schools. But sitting in a prefab is not the worst thing that can happen to a child - and we know that, as lots of us spent the 70s and 80s receiving our education in prefabs.The focus is going to have to be in providing the best services that can be provided at the lowest cost possible, to ensure that areas where needs are greatest suffer least. And at the moment, those needs are in the health services, and in the area of social welfare. We"re facing onto a bumpy ride.But as one commentator said on RTE1 on Saturday morning last, if we don"t get out of this recession, we could be facing into 'Mad Max territory'.It may be time for more of us to start asking not what our country can do for us, but, as John F. Kennedy suggested, what we can do for our country.