Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

As I said, there were welcome features in this budget, but the imagination deficit meant that the real issues which affect real people in their real lives were dodged. The budget contains few reforming measures, either of specific spending areas or the budgetary process. Once again, the budget confirms that Fianna Fáil and the PDs are determined to privatise health care. More money has been provided for home care packages, rather than for running a proper system of home helps. The Government could have used the budget to set out a new direction for the health service. It could have set useful targets for the building of new hospital beds, and new step-down facilities. It could have set out capital envelopes for these objectives and started to get on with the job. Instead, we will have to wait until January for the new national development plan, which will be a cross between Transport 21 and the last national health strategy. These were both great works of fiction, which could have been written by JRR Tolkien for all the relevance they had to the real world. Lavish promises will be made, and huge sums of money will be mentioned.

The people queuing in accident and emergency departments tonight do not need glossy plans and lavish promises. They need hospital and community care beds. This budget should contain detailed plans and funding for both. It contains neither. Instead, we are told to depend on tax-financed construction of super-private clinics on scarce public land. Once again, instead of treating health care as a community service, we will get more for-profit medicine, and more tax breaks for the wealthy. That is what Fianna Fáil now stands for.

The budget should have announced the ending of the disastrous scheme to build super-private clinics with taxpayers' money on scarce public land. It is a scheme that will fundamentally alter the nature of health care in Ireland, and for which the Minister for Health and Children sought no mandate and has no mandate.

The so-called national child care strategy stalled yesterday. There was nothing new to announce but the priority should have been pre-school education. The Labour Party is committed to universal free education at primary, secondary and third level. It should also apply at pre-school. The benefits of pre-school education for children, and for society, are well researched, well established and considerable. The Government will find no better investment than investment in our children.

Such an investment would also have made a huge impact on the problem of poverty and disadvantage. It sounds as if it could not be done but it would have cost approximately the same as cutting the top rate of tax. Eaten bread is soon forgotten, or should I say eaten cake given that the Minister has chosen to favour the wealthy few. Investment in free pre-school for all would still be paying dividends in 50 years' time but that would have required imagination. The extension of maternity leave is welcome although it was promised last year. It is a pity the Government did not see fit to bring forward proposals for a right to part-time work or to take a career break.

This budget was also silent on education. It is a sad commentary on how this Government functions that it can be committed to a knowledge economy but have nothing in the budget about education, particularly at primary level. There is no understanding of the funding crisis that faces so many primary schools. Education should be free but it cannot be cheap. Irish primary schools are run on a shoestring through a confusing system of grants. Inevitably, the energies of school principals in particular are devoted to fundraising and keeping the show on the road rather than to educational leadership. A modest amount of money, about a third or less of what was spent on cutting the top rate of tax, would have revolutionised the funding of primary education in Ireland. It would have a truly transformative effect on schools but the budget did not show that degree of imagination.

The budget was also virtually silent on transport. Is the Government ideologically hidebound or is it just disconnected from the everyday lives of people who rise at 6.30 a.m. to produce €4 billion for which the Minister for Finance expects so many plaudits by returning €1.6 billion to them? Once again the money spent on the top rate tax cut would have paid for the 500 buses that Dublin Bus needs. The Government persists in its refusal to provide buses while it waffles on about bringing in the private sector in the never never. People want to get to and from work today and, whatever the merits of Transport 21, people need buses today. We have quality bus corridors with no buses. The Government speaks of bringing in the private sector. Does it matter if the bus driver is wearing a private or public sector jersey as he tries to drive through the streets of Dublin? That is not the issue. The only immediate solution, as proposed by Roisin Shortall in the document published by the Labour Party, is more buses now. There is no reference to that in this budget. The list goes on. There is no understanding of the real needs of real people.

Issues, vulnerability and uncertainties confront the economy. There is over-reliance on construction for jobs growth and the property market is delicately poised. Growth relies on domestic demand rather than on export-led demand to a far greater degree than it did before. Inflation is too high and needs to be managed. In a small open economy in a monetary union, excess inflation means loss of competitiveness and loss of employment.

I would like to have heard the Minister for Finance address those issues. I would like to have heard a meaningful presentation on the medium-term prospects for the economy and how we can ensure more and better jobs through investment in people and infrastructure. I would like to have heard some real thinking on climate change, not just a proposal to pay for our failure to address it. I would like the Minister for Finance to address the question of economic management in anything other than a patronising manner.

Value for money is one element that he really should have addressed. In a small open economy in a globalising world, the competitiveness of the Irish economy depends on having a lean, agile Government, capable of responding to emerging needs. It means having a system of public expenditure management that can deliver value for money. Failure to do so imposes competitive costs on the economy and reduces the standard of living for our citizens. This budget made no mention of reform in this area. The Minister has disregarded the report published by the Committee of Public Accounts. The record on budgetary reform amounts to publishing the economic review and outlook in the autumn rather than in the summer and leaking the details of the budget for electoral advantage. That is regrettable, a missed opportunity and a cost to the economy.

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