TEN days to the budget and with few final decisions made by the cabinet at this point, it's not an exaggeration to say that ministers probably have to sign off on around €300m a day in cutbacks and savings between now and 9 December.

Sadly, it will be simply impossible to achieve €4bn in savings without tackling the social-welfare budget, which accounts for over a third of all government spending.

The word from government is that around €1bn has to come off social welfare spending and that means tough decisions have to be made in the coming days.

The most obvious target for savings should be from child benefit, which costs an eye-watering €2.5bn a year. It is one of the few social welfare payments (the old age pension is another) that is universal and is not specifically targeted at those who are least well-off.

Every mother with a child gets the same level of payment regardless of her income. In a state that is borrowing around €400m a week, it is a statement of the obvious that this is unsustainable.

Yet all the indications are that, while child benefit will be reduced, the government is shying away from the kind of €500m reduction that had been widely anticipated in the upcoming budget.

The figure now being mooted in government circles is less than half that amount. The reason for that, presumably, is down to the fear of a public backlash against moves to reduce child benefit.

But if the government does opt for a cut of around 9%-10% in spending on child benefit, rather than 20%, it will have to find the additional €250m-plus elsewhere in the social welfare budget and that money is going to have to come from much more marginalised (although less politically influential) groups.

The level of middle-class hostility to moves to reduce child benefit is extraordinary. A text to a radio show from one familiy with a household income of €100,000 declaring that they could not manage if child benefit was reduced suggests that public expectations are still far removed from the new economic realities we're a facing as a state running a massive budget deficit.

Nobody likes having to take a cut in income but those groups forcibly arguing against a reduction in child benefit must not be let away without answering the €1bn question. If child benefit is not to be cut, where are the savings in the social-welfare budget to come from? Cuts in basic rates of social welfare? Cuts in the old-age pension? Cuts in the carers' allowance or disability allowance?

And hogwash that there are alternative ways of making savings without touching social welfare – which accounts for 34% of all current spending. That should not be allowed go unchallenged either.

I would be one of the people affected by any cut in child benefit. I have three children so I currently get €6,420 a year tax-free. Before the changes to the early childcare supplement, I was also getting an additional €3,300-plus a year, meaning my family was receiving close to €10,000 a year from the state (or the equivalent of a €20,000 increase in pay, when tax is taken into account).

Even when the state was awash with money, it struck me as questionable that my family was in receipt of this largesse.

We are not particularly well-off. There is only one wage-earner in the house in recent years and without disclosing my exact earnings from journalism, I would be a fair way off Green TD Mary White's definition of wealthy, which she said was those earning €100,000 a year. Against that, it is only fair to also disclose that we do not have a big mortgage or a big car loan.

I would, of course, love to earn more (who wouldn't?) and, to my discredit, I wasn't going to turn down the child-benefit money. But I would be lying if I said this child benefit money was essential for us.

It came in very handy at times as it accumulated in the post office. But it was mainly used to finance activities such as holidays or home improvements that really isn't the state's job to fund.

Of course I'm not saying that is the case for everybody who also happens to earn a decent salary. I accept that mortgage repayments can seriously skew the picture. But I would venture to suggest that my situation is not a unique one and that it is simply not sustainable or affordable for the state to continue in this way.

If we are serious about social equity and about continuing to tackle poverty despite reduced resources, then reform of the current universal child benefit system is essential.

It is crucial, for reasons of child poverty, that the least well-off continue to receive the same rate of child benefit, but we simply cannot afford that to be the case for those higher up the scale. Whether it is done by taxation or by means testing, the child-benefit budget needs to come down by at least 20% (which would still be far ahead of what it was a decade ago).

It mightn't be politically palatable to do so, but the alternative is socially unpalatable and manifestly unjust. Which is more important?

scoleman@tribune.ie