Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

The climate for this year's budget is extremely different from that which pertained before the general election. The way in which Fianna Fáil, in particular, presented the finances of the State in the lead-up to the election suggested the only way was up. However, the vast majority of our hard-working people were of the view that this budget would never be anything other than reasonably tight. However, the Taoiseach and his Ministers are now using that old trick of giving the impression to the electorate that the budget will be punitive so that whatever is revealed on budget day will not seem so bad.

There are several issues to which people will look with concern on budget day. We all want to know how far the Government will go in implementing the promises it made before the election. For instance, will there be a change in either the higher or standard tax rates? Will there be any change in PRSI? I recall a clear statement on the part of the Government that the rate would be reduced from 4% to 2%. These are fundamental issues in which every working person will have more than a passing interest. According to the information presented yesterday by the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, all the indications are that the outturn for 2008 will involve a revenue intake of some €2.2 billion less than that for 2007. This is an enormous shortfall.

Our priority, as we approach budget day, is to obtain a clear view of the infrastructural projects that will be financed in 2008. For example, I read a newspaper article last week indicating that 14 new schools will be built in the Dublin area. I have no doubt those schools are urgently required but no more so than the extension to the school in my own locality of Mountbellew, where 169 pupils are accommodated in a building intended for no more than 97. This school faces the same difficulties as those encountered by any school in Dublin. Pupils in Mountbellew endure cramped conditions in prefabricated classrooms. People had an expectation, given the money available to the Government in the last five years, as disbursed through the much trumpeted multiannual budgets, that school accommodation needs throughout the State would be met.

The new budgetary process is to be welcomed because it at least gives us an opportunity to discuss what our priorities should be, based on the figures provided to us by the Department. However, it does not in any way identify what will happen in 2008 in respect of specific infrastructural projects. For example, there is no indication whether proposed investment in inter-urban and secondary roads and in rail services will go ahead. Evidence of the unfortunate slowdown in the building industry is everywhere. In County Galway, building sites are closing on a weekly basis or only ten houses are built on sites which were originally to accommodate 60. A significant proportion of the €2.2 billion of taxes foregone next year results from the slowdown in the building industry. Are we to assume this slowdown means proposed infrastructural projects will not go ahead at the level and pace which we were promised? Alternatively, will another mechanism be deployed, such as borrowing, to ensure those projects can be implemented?

We wait with bated breath to see what happens on budget day.

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