Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

Even though the property market was already collapsing and the economic storm clouds were gathering, he made provision for an additional €5 billion in current spending, more than three times what he predicted would be available from increases in tax revenues. That wildly optimistic tax forecast has proved entirely illusory. The Taoiseach budgeted that 70% of borrowing this year would be used to fill the gap between the huge current spending and the tax he hoped would come in. The tax take was not realised but spending has pushed ahead regardless.

We are now seeing what was never before seen in the history of the State — a surplus of €2 billion in 2006 being turned into a deficit which the ESRI predicts will be €11 billion in 2009. The Taoiseach sleepwalked into this entirely predictable crisis. At a time when every commentator was telling him that his spending programmes were unaffordable, he pushed on relentlessly. We are paying for that recklessness now. The Taoiseach has destroyed the flexibility and capacity of our economy to withstand the economic downturn which was so clearly predicted.

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