The pain kicks in next month. The payback comes a month later.
It begins to bite the moment that Irish workers tear open their May pay cheques and discover they are paying more tax on their increasingly shrinking salaries. Shrinking because despite relatively low interest rates and falling fuel prices, staples such as food continue to rise.
Revenge will be exacted on 5 June when Ireland goes to the polls in the European and local government elections as well as a crucial byelection in Dublin Central. Fianna Fáil, Ireland and arguably Europe's most successful postwar party, expects to take one of the severest hits in its history. It may for the first time even fail to return a candidate to represent Dublin in the European parliament.
Ireland has just passed one of the most brutal, some would say most important, budgets in its history as an independent state. Taxes were hiked and public spending slashed as Brian Cowen's government sought to plug a widening black hole in Irish public finances.
When a friend, a northerner who has lived in the republic for nearly 25 years, heard that the cuts included the end of Ireland's traditional Christmas bonus for those on social welfare his reaction was one of astonishment.
He went so far as to predict that there would be a backbench rebellion or perhaps even a revolt by the Green party precipitating a collapse in the coalition government. Such a mean-spirited gesture, he contended, would be too much to stomach even for the normally ultra-loyal Fianna Fáil backbenchers.
Emotions were running high after Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, delivered his budget last week. The Dublin editions of the British tabloids, most notably the Irish Daily Star, even played on the Easter theme of crucifixion – with no mention of any potential resurrection. A gloriously tasteless front page on Thursday showed a Christ-like figure (the Irish worker, no doubt) being nailed to a cross by the two Brians, Cowen and Lenihan.
Opposition deputies, meanwhile, have been trying to wear down the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition's weak flank. In the Dáil on Wednesday, one of the parliament's most talented and eloquent deputies, former Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, tormented the Greens for shoring up Fianna Fáil even though the former party was conveniently absent from the chamber at the time.
Fine Gael and Labour's strategy is crystal clear: they are riding high in the polls and would sweep to power if there was election next week. What they need, therefore, is rapid panic spreading through the ranks of the government's junior partner and thus the coalition's collapse.
Judging by the latest opinion polls, Fianna Fáil appears, at least for now, doomed to lose the next general election, which would mean the party would be out of power for the first time in a dozen years. Which is why Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore desire an election sooner rather than later. Which is why they require the Greens to buckle under the pressure and bring the government down.
The one thing paradoxically that Cowen has on his side is time. The last chance for what was once an unthinkable partnership is that the harsh measures taken in the Lenihan budget might actually turn Ireland's dire economic circumstances around. If Cowen, Lenihan and even the Green ministers holding power can convince the electorate that the medicine might be unpalatable but in the end will cure the patient they may yet see off the strongest Fine Gael-Labour challenge in living memory.
All of the above sounds vaguely familiar – the echoes of Margaret Thatcher and her harsh panacea for the UK economy are obvious. Cowen and his administration might even borrow a phrase from Maggie when faced with criticism that their tax and slash budget crucified PAYE workers and their families in this Holy Week.
The rallying cry of the Fianna Fáil faithful (already being amplified by some deputies) shall be – there is no alternative!
By the way, the harshest budget in decades was passed by a majority of 15 in the Dáil, thanks in part to the support of the Greens. No sign yet then of that Green panic.