Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

They gave £49 for subsequent children and we are giving €185. Need I say anything more about child care strategy? In recent years we have built the supply and demand. We have increased places dramatically and under the new five-year programme we will increase them by another 50,000 places in order to bring down the prices.

Our record on taxation speaks for itself as we have taken so many people out of the tax net. Some 52,000 taxpayers will be taken out of the tax net next year. During their time in Government Fine Gael and Labour only took 10,000 and 18,000 out of the tax net in the two budgets they introduced.

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