Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

A bus driver's children could not go to college because their income was too high for a grant whereas somebody on farming income — and I say good luck to them because I think they should get it — could vary their income when their children were coming up to college age and they would get a grant. To add to that, the people who were really well-off could take out a covenant. The cost of the covenant in tax foregone was very significant at the time and almost fully if not totally funded the cost of opening up university and third level access to everybody.

If the Minister reintroduces third level fees, as he is hinting he might like to do, he will also return and introduce tax breaks. Who will the tax breaks particularly benefit? They will benefit the better-off. This argument is not about who is or is not pro-economic development; I am in favour of economic development. We are talking about spreading the fruits around. If I may say so, I would have thought the events of the past month would have made the Minister much more aware of this. It costs €800 a month for child care because both parents must work all the hours God sends in order to be able to buy what was traditionally regarded as a right — a private house. The Minister should talk to those people who get up at 6 a.m. to leave children into a crèche and who do not return home until 7 p.m.

As well as economic prosperity and growth, there is the quality of life aspect to the debate. I do not have the figures with me but on the indices in respect of quality of life in the European Union, such as access to transportation, Ireland unfortunately still ranks about 15 out of 16. I will bring the statistics with me to the House tomorrow if statistics are being traded. These are important statistics about quality of life.

I do not know if the Minister regularly pays €1.80 to cross the West Link toll bridge. The cost has risen significantly in recent years. The bridge is in my constituency. Drivers pay that money in order to take part in one of the largest parked traffic jams in Europe. The Minister can correctly say that as an economy we are delighted to have more employment, delighted that people are doing better and that incomes have risen but what he cannot deny is that the cost of living in Ireland for families is extremely high in critical aspects such as the cost of health.

I do not know the cost of a GP visit in County Offaly but in the Dublin area it would be difficult to visit a GP at a cost of under €40 and many GPs charge €45 to €50. A prescription will cost anything from €20 to €30. If a bug hits an entire family and if some of the children are slightly asthmatic, a very high proportion of that family's after-tax income will be used to pay for services that in other EU countries are paid for by taxes. If the Minister was to use the West Link toll bridge to drive home, he would pay €1.80 to sit in one of the biggest traffic jams in Europe.

I welcome that the Minister wishes to have a debate about balance. In a debate about balance, one must examine where people have definitely made gains — and I agree people have made gains — but in any notion of a fair society, which the Minister has indicated is one of his aims — one cannot have the situation where some people flaunt themselves as paying no contribution. If those people were in a traffic accident, I presume they would unfortunately end up in the same accident and emergency unit as the rest of us. As they drive their top of the range Mercedes, I think they use the same roads as the rest of us because I see them. When they pop over in their helicopter for the day, I think they use the same airport facilities that the rest of us pay for. The equity question is that we want a fair contribution from everybody and we want the Minister and the Government to acknowledge that for quite a number of families in this society, this is an expensive country. Services are difficult to access, they are awkward to get and they are very costly when they come out of after-tax income if one has a family of small children. Child care can be a crippling burden.

It sometimes seems that nobody on the Government benches is really getting this message because they are so taken with the success side of the equation. The Minister is entitled to sell the success and he sells it very well but he needs to undertake a listening exercise in respect of the side that is not going so well. As the Minister stated, politics is about making decisions; some people like the decisions and others do not. It was interesting that the Minister did not get worked up about some of the property-based tax reliefs. Both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have said to me on several occasions that they do not find it acceptable that someone on an income of more than €200,000 should make no tax contribution.

In a speech last weekend the Minister said he was going to "weed out" some of the people in the system——

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