• They initially imposed a 1% levy on all earned income (rather than an ideologically unsound "tax-rise"), including the income of people on the minimum wage who would be normally exempt from tax. They were forced to u-turn on this and exempt those with income below €17,500, though a tax consultant friend of Sam's suggests that the administrative cost of imposing the levy on the low-paid was prohibitive anyway.
• They presented the removal of automatic free health care for the over 70s in a stunningly inept way, causing huge uncertainty and making it seem that large numbers of older people would end up paying thousands of euros a year. After some fiddling they've had to u-turn on this as well. 15,000 people protested on the streets on Dublin about this and were stories of hundreds at rallies singing "We shall overcome" to drown out ministers.
• They're cutting education, including cutting back the number of support teachers - specialist language teachers for immigrant children for instance - and allowing class sizes to grow in direct defiance of a key election promise. Their rumblings about third level got 10,000 student to protest after the pensioner protest finished up. Traffic was bad that day.

In any case, the public is not in the mood to punisg the vulnerable for our budgetary problems, and the next, best opportunities to express that are the local and European elections next year and a re-vote on the Lisbon Treaty. I imagine the government parties will do badly in the elections and it will be easy for to No campaign to harness the anti-government feeling in a treaty campaign, especially with the Commission calling for further austerity and starting a formal censure process against Ireland for budget overruns.

About the only thing that can save Lisbon would be an early general election, but the chances of Fianna Fail falling on their sword in the interests of the country or the EU are zero: it's not in their make-up.