Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

When we are looking for consensus in this House the one important thing is that we do not get lectures from the Government benches on the economy and the public finances because it is the Government which is totally responsible for the mess and economic crisis we are in.

It should be acknowledged that a fair measure of consensus has been reached to date. There is acceptance on the need to reduce the budget deficit to 3% by 2014. There is agreement also on the front-loading of the cutbacks of €6 billion. Cutbacks of €15 billion cannot be agreed or even confirmed by the Government until realistic estimates are made of the growth rates that are anticipated. The involvement of the Commission in deciding on those projections gives comfort that perhaps we can have confidence in the figures presented by the Minister for Finance in future.

The other area of consensus is that the budget deficit would be below 10% in 2011.

The Government's view is that the balance between expenditure cuts and taxation increases should be 3:1. A fair measure of consensus on the broad parameters would allow us to give some indicators to the market and Commission Rehn who has referred to Ireland as a low tax economy. However, that is not so in one respect. In successive budgets the price of cigarettes and tobacco was raised to double that in the rest of Europe. The problem in this regard is that, apart from not succeeding in reducing the level of consumption of tobacco, an extraordinary illegal trade has been created from which criminal gangs and dissident republicans are benefiting. If we continue down this route and do not reverse the flawed policy followed in successive budgets, we will have a major problem in law enforcement.