Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----from the very rattled Labour Party backbenchers who are looking more rattled by the day.

The facts are so clear that this year, for the first time in 20 years, the budget documentation this year did not include figures on the impact of changes on different income levels. As new taxes and charges mount, we should remember there were ten new tax increases in 2012, 20 in 2013, and a further ten in 2014.

This was the Government's commitment to workers over the past three years in terms of its budgets and comments in relation to taxation.

Fine Gael and the Labour Party issued hundreds of press releases claiming to be fair and to be helping the coping classes while trying to hide the details of yet another regressive budget last October. For three and a half years many in government were living in denial, operating under the belief that the public would give them credit for every positive development, whether or not they had made it happen. They also hoped it could continue running its speeches of the last election so that people would blame the previous Government for everything negative, regardless of how much the policies were linked to decisions of Labour Party and Fine Gael Ministers. In May, this strategy came to a crashing halt. For the first time even Government's most uncritical and naive supporters understand that the public is angry with this Government. The public does not just want a change of faces; it wants a major change of direction. However, that is not what it is getting.

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