Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The balance between expenditure and taxation was something we negotiated in the programme for Government, as the Deputy knows. At the last election, Fine Gael campaigned on the basis of making the adjustment on the basis of 3:1. The Labour Party campaigned on the basis of 1:1. The balance is somewhere in the middle. What is to be done in the forthcoming budget? In current expenditure terms, we will reduce expenditure by €1.7 billion and in capital expenditure terms by €0.55 billion which is already in the capital programme that has been published. That is an adjustment on the expenditure side of €2.25 billion and an adjustment on the taxation side of €1.25 billion. That is €3.5 billion in total. That is the way it will be.