The fiasco over the withdrawal of medical cards from the over 70s raises questions about the entire budget and undermines wider public confidence in the government's ability to res-tore the public finances to some sort of order.

There is no sense of coherence or direction in many of the measures, least of all in the 'bottom line' big figures on which the entire budget is based. Some of those targets are so wildly optimistic that it is hard to see how a mini-budget can be avoided next year in order to re-align the national finances. Of course the global financial situation is so fast-moving that it is hard to make any firm predictions. We all pray for a miracle, but given what we know about the state of the economy today, to forecast that unemployment will only be 7.3% next year and that our GDP will contract by only 0.75% is to fly in the face of what everyone is experiencing.

Two of the leading stockbroking firms last week predicted our economy could contract by as much as three or four times as much as fore- casters within the Department of Finance say, a reflection perhaps of the cold experience of small firms and investors who operate outside the cloisters of the public sector.

But optimism has meant Brian Lenihan's budget could maintain the fiction to international investors that he did not raise taxes and that despite our temporary difficulties we are a low taxation economy, but also that the measures he took would somehow balance the books. The debt levels of €13.4bn (or 7% of GDP) are a lot higher than most people would have wanted but, the minister assured us, they would be reduced over a three-year timescale. Today, nobody, thanks to the destructive contagion of the medical-card issue, now believes that.

The decision to remove medical cards has caused a political meltdown on the scale of John Bruton taxing children's shoes back in 1982. It has shattered political unity within the coalition, a valuable commodity after such a harsh budget.

But it has also breached public trust because, as prepared as the public were to take a big hit because of what the two Brians like to refer to in the manner of a pair of elderly aunts as our "changed economic circumstances", nobody ever thought this government would actually dare to give €180m in a stamp duty reduction for commercial property developers while saving €100m by taking medical cards from over 70s.

The government, and particularly Mary Coughlan in 'attack dog' mode, has accused Fine Gael of hypocrisy. And yes, James Reilly, their health spokesman and the man who in his former life as head of the IMO sealed the contemptuous deal which paid GPs four times the normal rate for a medical card, is seriously compromised.

But old people – and very significantly for this government, their wider families too – aren't interested in the political game.

The move, mishandled at every turn, has frightened a vulnerable, nervous and understandably confused section of society who, as they have rightly reminded us on almost every radio and television programme in the past week, have worked hard all their lives, mostly through very difficult economic times, and who, just because this government squandered the wealth of the past decade, should not now be made the principal fallguys.

A lot has been made of the state paying for wealthy retired judges and senior civil servants but everyone knows that these high earners make up a tiny fraction of the older population. What percentage, nobody knows for sure, largely because none of this has been properly costed or analysed before the decision to cut the benefit was taken. The HSE does not even know how much the task of means-testing the 140,000 old people involved is likely to cost.

Brian Lenihan and Mary Harney say €100m will be saved – this out of a HSE budget of €15,800,000,000. But how they come by that figure is unclear.

It certainly does not take into account the fact that more than just a card is being lost. The GPs are only the access point and a very minor part of all this. The loss of the medical card could mean the collapse of an entire system of supports, from home help to chiropodists, from physiotherapists to dietitians and community services which had the aim of keeping people at home and out of much more expensive hospital or nursing home care.

Old people and their families know this and it makes the lack of intelligence that informed this cut all the more disgraceful.

The real target, of course, was the GPs whose huge payments under the scheme have rankled ever since it was introduced. If so, then why did the government not face them down initially and cut the fee in the spirit of 'patriotism', rather than ditch the entitlement?

Brian Lenihan promised at the start of his budget that he would protect the vulnerable and would not pander to the vested interests and he sat down with a rousing call for everyone to do their patriotic duty to save the economy. The mishandling of the withdrawal of the medical cards is coming to stand as a political symbol of the general government incompetence, but also of its preference to offer up the vulnerable rather than face down vested interests.