Joan Burton calls them the coping classes. I call them the "pay for everything, get nothing for nothing" classes.

Whatever you call them, they are the ones taking the most pain in this Budget.

Particularly taking the pain are those whose income is just too high to qualify for benefits such as the medical card, but too low to leave them financially secure.

For them, and indeed for people on even lower incomes, the 1pc levy seems, frankly, unfair even in our current circumstances.

And for them, a €100 Accident & Emergency fee will throw the week's household budget into a tailspin.

These are, in many ways, the people who have kept our economy going. Working for modest incomes they have, nevertheless, found a way to cope with ridiculous house prices and rents. They work incredibly hard and they get nothing for nothing.

They, too, will be particularly hit by the 0.5 per cent rise in VAT and by the hefty rise in duty on petrol.

A key thing to remember when thinking of the Budget is that many middle class people have not been having a massive party during the Celtic Tiger years.

Caught in a pincer movement between Government taxation policy, bank lending policies and the greed of developers, they have taken out mortgages which, for them, are crushing.

Mortgages

They have worked long hours, they have commuted many miles. Now the Tiger is dead, but the mortgage payments remain and will be there for a long time to come.

These people are entitled to feel angry that they are now paying for policies that enabled developers and banks to exploit their need for a home and with the connivance of Government.

I come again to that €100 Accident and Emergency charge. Where did such an idea come from? Perhaps from somebody to whom €100 doesn't mean an awful lot?

You won't have to pay the €100 if you are referred by your GP. But suppose you, your partner or child gets sick at a time when there is no GP around? How fair is it that you are hit for a €100 as a result?

And how will you feel as you watch a drunk on a medical card careering around the A&E after you have paid your €100?

All right, perhaps that's a stereotype but, stereotype or not, it happens. And it strikes me as odd that people who pay for their GP service are "discouraged" by punitive charges from attending A&E while those who get a free GP service (medical card holders) are not.

Insult

All of this suggests that the A&E charge is a tax and nothing but a tax. But it's a rotten tax. To ask people to pay €100 to sit around for 10 or 12 hours in an A&E department, or to spend 24 hours on a trolley, is an insult.

The increase to €100 a month in the amount that most of us must spend on prescribed medicines is also a blow to people on low to middle incomes who do not have medical cards. Frankly, this new upper limit makes the Drugs Payment Scheme irrelevant to most of us most of the time. And could I point out to ministers that we don't actually buy medicines for fun -- we buy them reluctantly and because we have to.

I have focused here on the lower-middle income group who, I believe, tend to be particularly put upon by budgets and by fiscal and welfare policy in general.

Shameful

But the cut in disability is shameful. The Disability Federation Ireland complains that €10m is to be allocated to disability and mental health services instead of the €50m originally committed in 2005. This drop in funding is in addition to the €83m already redirected from disability and mental health services by the HSE since 2007.

Can you defend that, Mr Lenihan?

- Padraig O'Morain