Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I listened to the contributions from our Fianna Fáil colleagues and Deputy Curran made some reasonable points. Deputy O'Connor, however, takes a much too sanguine view of the economy, the people he represents in Dublin South West and the impact this budget and Finance Bill will have on them.

During the budget, the Minister for Finance made great play of the fact that he is spending €45 billion, that our rate of expenditure is three times that of our European partners and that we have a low EBR and a GDP that will rise by 5%. These are valuable statistics but for decades there was fundamental under-investment in social services in the State. The Ceann Comhairle asked me to leave the House this morning when I tried to raise that very issue with the Taoiseach, a former Minister for Finance.

The chaotic scenes I saw last night of valiant staff trying to cope with a grossly overcrowded accident and emergency unit in Beaumont Hospital were the direct result of the refusal by a significant share of the most influential in society to pay their fair share of tax throughout the 1970s and 1980s. My party and the trade union movement were told again and again during that period that the money was not available. Luminaries such as the great Vincent Browne, journalists such as Paul Tansey and economists such as Seán Barrett from Trinity College lectured us relentlessly in the 1980s about how we should retrench and cut back. When the Ceann Comhairle was Minister for Health, we cut back in a frightening and, ultimately, fatal way for many people. We have been saturated for decades with ráiméis about the tax burden in this State and the grossly unfair way it has been levied. It is striking that once again when we look at the Finance Bill, only 19 sections relate to PAYE workers while the rest tweak the income tax, VAT, CGT and corporation tax to facilitate the vested interests in the State.

There is no instrument in the Dáil to address the naked economic power represented in this House primarily by Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats and sometimes by Fine Gael. That naked power appears again and again in this Finance Bill. We have yet to see a Finance Bill that will try to transfer the burden of taxation fundamentally.

I welcome some of the measures being introduced here, particularly tax credits, the increase in the standard rate band and the removal of another tranche of taxpayers from the tax net. I remember when Proinsías De Rossa was a Member of this House and year after year, he would calculate the numbers of workers who Fianna Fáil Ministers for Finance told us had been taken from the tax net. When they were added up, the figures were equal to the size of the work force. The reality is that the majority of PAYE workers pay tax at the higher rate.

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