Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The policy was 2:1, namely, for every €2 of adjustment by way of expenditure cuts there would be €1 adjustment by way of tax. However, while the expenditure side is more difficult to manage, tax goes up with the economic cycle. In the first three months of this year, income tax was up 8%, but I did not increase income tax in either of the budgets I brought in. While we get the added benefit, the taxes I brought in were not on personal taxation.

It is a fair point. It is harder to do expenditure cuts. If we go back to the two budgets, even though there were tax increases, the big political rows were about small amounts of money around expenditure. On the Social Welfare Bill, Senator Barrett and all his colleagues in the Seanad, including the Taoiseach's nominees, voted against an amount of €26 million, and brought the Social Welfare Bill down to a majority of one vote. If the Senator reflects on that, he will see the difficulties of controlling expenditure.