EÁmon Ó Cuív cut a lonely figure in the Dáil as he reduced the welfare payments of blind people and carers – who actually work for their benefit – and announced a new and chilling scheme of disability benefit which operates on a sliding scale of payment according to the degree of incapacity suffered by the recipient.

No Fianna Fáil backbenchers were in sight. Nor the independents who had supported these measures. They had left the chamber.

Reasonable people feel disgust that this government – Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, frontbench spokesmen and backbench TDs – actually chose to make these sort of cuts. No amount of handwringing that there is "no other way" can persuade the public that it is justifiable to cut the payments of 1,472 blind people whose €600,000 annual benefit is just one-tenth of what is spent on ministerial cars.

Nor can there be any logic for cutting the financial help given to carers who actually save the state a small fortune by keeping the elderly and sick out of hospitals and institutions.

Had the government tightened the rules for assessing people as fit or unfit for work in order to counter fraud, their approach to disability payment may have been clearer. But categorising people as worth more or less in monetary terms according to the level of their disability is offensive.

We understand very well that the 2011 deficit of €17.6bn remains unsustainable and that it will take many difficult years to correct our national finances. But not this way.

The government made a rational choice that it was better to take money from blind and disabled people than to introduce even a small flat-rate property tax, or a nominal water charge, or enforce a small increase in the excise on alcohol.

We all know we have to pay more tax, but the government could not even get its universal social charge/tax right. The charge is applicable to all earnings above €4,004, but by a quirk of the new rules, the wealthy self-employed earning over €200,000 are better off. The millionaire self-employed, such as the more prominent tribunal lawyers, are better off by €23,000.

No wonder the individual examples issued to illustrate the effect of the budget stopped at salaries below €200,000.

Even the symbolic measures designed to demonstrate that the country's elite were not untouchable were puny. The pay of senior executives will be capped at €250,000 but not their bonuses and expense accounts which are equally lucrative. The effort to minimise the gross salaries of government ministers which were reduced again by constantly talking about their net earnings was insulting spin. Everybody's net salary is substantially smaller.

But if this was an extraordinary week given how extraordinarily unfair the budget has turned out to be, even more extraordinary has been the renaissance of Brian Cowen.

The Taoiseach, as a result of whatever catalyst exists within his own psyche, has shown he is not a beaten force. His backbenchers are only too delighted that the fighting Brian Cowen they thought they knew is targeting divisions between Fine Gael and Labour.

For the public generally, all this is too late. It should have happened over two years ago. It makes his past behaviour all the worse to think that he was capable of being more decisive and showing more leadership, but did not bother to do so. If he had been less lethargic, could so much of the budgetary pain we are now to endure have been minimized, perhaps even avoided?

It's reasonable to ask why this energy has been discovered only when his position as leader of Fianna Fáil has come under serious threat.

As for their partners, the actions of the Green Party over the past week have revealed they unfit to govern at a time like this. Their initial decision to call for an election by the end of January was a panic-stricken reaction to the need to call in the IMF and EU. Their post-budget whingeing that they needed time to pass Green legacy reforms is beyond unreasonable.

The budget is through. The country wants this government out. There can be no delay in calling the election.

As for the Opposition, only one person has stood out. Michael Noonan's performance across the entire budget debate has been pitch perfect. His down to earth delivery, easy ability to communicate the essentials of his party's strategy and, crucially, differentiate it from Fianna Fáil's approach even though both parties adhere to the need to cut €6bn next year, has been little short of majestic.

He is becoming the lightning rod for the hopes of those who support a centre-right approach to our economic ills.

Eamon Gilmore has yet to set out convincingly and credibly enough why voters should prefer his strategy.