Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Yes, I will come in to respond briefly on that. First, at least the proposals my party brought forward during the election campaign were based on the premise of indexation and the need to do that. Again and again in the election campaign I made clear that I would never do anything that would cause what I believe would be a risk to our public finances. That has always been my starting point in many different election campaigns and all the different budgets I have done. The first priority has to be that you have to make choices, and the key choice is not to bring forward a budget that could be of such a scale that it might influence in a bad way choices that have to be made in the budgets that follow. I emphasise again that a budget that, overall, had increased investment at the scale that this budget has, that still involved an increase in current spending and that had brought forward an overall tax package of, let us say, €2.5 billion to €2.7 billion or €2.8 billion, I believe, would have been the wrong thing to do. I accept and understand that this is a tough argument to make with everything that is going on in people's live at the moment, but I think it would be a cause of greater cynicism in the long run if we were to bring forward budgets that we knowingly believe could create risks and for those risks to happen.