Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Taoiseach was away and he did not have a translator for it so he can smile.

What worries me about the Taoiseach's reply to Deputy Kenny is that he seems to be somewhat in denial and seems to be taking the position on the economy that something will turn up. As I understand, the position is that in the first two months of this year, the State took in almost €700 million less in tax than it did in the first two months of last year and €0.5 billion less than what it had expected to take in.

I wish to address how this affects people. Significant numbers of people have lost their jobs in the first two months of this year. There has been a 30% increase in redundancies, with 11,000 more people on the live register in January than at the beginning of last year. The level of unemployment in January of this year is the highest since 1999. Where is this going? It is all very well to keep throwing out figures and percentages and projections but where is all this going in terms of the lives that people lead in this country?

Last week in the House I raised the fact that money for the homeless services has been frozen, presumably as a result of the tightening revenue situation. Today we have a report that the Health Service Executive is looking for another €300 million in cuts in the health services that are already strained. We had a debate on this subject yesterday. My colleague, Deputy Joan Burton drew attention yesterday to an extraordinary tax break which the Minister for Finance proposes to introduce, whereby he intends to give a tax break to developers for developing private hospices. There is quite a sad irony that we will give tax breaks to people developing private hospices for people dying of cancer in a country where finance cannot be provided to provide them with tests and services in the public health service in the first place. Meanwhile we heard on the radio yesterday our former colleague, Tom Parlon, saying that the building workers, who will be building these hospices, should be paid 30% less.

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