Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

We were promised affordable homes in sustainable communities. Instead, we have had the inept policies that have abandoned first-time buyers to hopeless lotteries for the so-called affordable homes that have barely arrived and long commutes from distant green field sites where no facilities exist. This is the legacy of ten years. These are not the problems of success; they are the problems of failure of vision, of courage, to plan, to reform and to manage. That will be the epitaph on this Government's tomb.

The budget produces some balm to conceal the symptoms of the problems that it has passed up the opportunity to do anything serious about for ten years. As far as the Government is concerned, this is as good as it gets. It claims that it alone has the competence to manage this economy. It suffers from a well-known delusion of believing its own rhetoric. It has come to believe that what it says is right because it has forgotten what it takes to succeed in a small open economy such as ours, what it is to be alert and quick to move to spot opportunities. We have a private sector that is alert and quick to move and spot opportunities but a Government that is sluggish, slow, flabby and unable to keep up and reform and unable to deliver to those who need it most.

In many ways, this budget is a fitting end to a Government that has become totally absorbed in its celebrity appearances and its focus group research. Make-up teams show it how to look, wordsmiths tell it what to say, choreographers tell it how to get a good photo shoot but as the spinners become more professional, the Government has grown more out of touch. It no longer sees the real problems that people suffer as it is whisked through sanitised corridors instead of seeing the reality that people have to deal with day to day. It stays in its own comfort zone treading water, refusing to reform, refusing to lead, or to be subject to any scrutiny or evaluation.

In ancient Rome the emperors knew that when people were discontent, they had to provide a distraction. They laid on bread and circuses. It was designed to distract, to produce a flashy appearance while the reality was so different. That is what we have in today's budget — an attempt to produce a flashy appearance that is so different from the reality.

When the hype surrounding the budget has faded away, the reality for many of the people we were elected to serve will not have changed — the family on €342 per week with two children, who is deemed too wealthy to get a medical card; the young single worker on 80% of the average wage who has to pay tax at the top rate, the same as the multimillionaire; the elderly infirm person who, on €430 per week and in need of nursing home care, is told he or she is too wealthy to get support with such care that is likely to cost €1,000 per week; and the pensioner on €260 per week who is told he or she is too wealthy to get the fuel allowance. That is what will be left after the budget is complete. That is the reality for many. That is the big gulf between appearances and the reality.

Nowhere have we come to see the gulf between reality and appearances more clearly than in the area of taxation. For three years in a row, the Minister said he would reduce the tax burden. Each year when the figures were counted, he collected more than he said and more than people's income. This Government has seen the tax burden rise to the highest level ever.

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