Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

That is a ridiculous system but the Minister persists with it. We have not seen in this budget the commitment to reform that is necessary. The budget should have been a watershed and should have provided for real changes, whereby managers were held responsible, power was devolved, change was implemented and people were expected to reach high standards. This was the opportunity to do it but, again, it has been fluffed.

The vulnerable deserved a lot better than what they got today. Even before today's budget was produced, the Government did not spare the most vulnerable in our community. When the HSE's budget was running short during the summer it targeted the disabled and the old. Programme improvements for them were withdrawn so the HSE could limp on unreformed. When savings were required in July, where did the hand go? It went for overseas development aid and the money that had been assigned for nursing homes. It was all clawed back. Again, it was the soft option of hitting people who are weak.

Today we see more of it. The accident and emergency service charge is increased by 51%, the hospital charge by 14%, the drugs refund charge by 11% and the long-stay charge by26%. Who will these charges hit other than the people in our community who are sick and vulnerable? However, these people only received a €7 increase in their social welfare payment. That is not even indexation, it is 3% when inflation is running at 4.5%. Their annual income has been cut in real terms and they are also being asked to stump up all these extra charges when they use these services. I do not know who was with the Minister when he set the increase for the fuel allowance. It is just €2 extra per week at a time when fuel prices have gone through the roof. Older people who are dependent on poor fuel systems will suffer through this winter but there has been no consideration of their needs.

There was also little consciousness of the 200,000 people who are at risk of losing their jobs under the new regime. Where was the reform of the redundancy scheme to provide for immediate re-training or reform of the back to education scheme so people will not have to wait years before they get a chance to re-skill? Where is the reform in the family income supplement to target it at people who really need it? There has been no attempt to innovate, to think our way through or to create opportunities for people who are losing their jobs. That is not good enough. This budget has not been about innovation, change, hunting down waste and finding ways to help people who are vulnerable. Instead, the soft option is always chosen. That is the tragedy we are confronted with today.

In the longer term our success depends on being a successful trading economy. The gravest policy mistake in recent years by the Government has been to forget that this country stands or falls by its ability to export. That is a tragedy, which will make it very difficult for us to pull through and recover from these difficult times. There is nothing in today's budget that sets out the new programme for reform in the public sector organisations that hold that back. Let us be honest. Ireland is bottom of the league in terms of ports, airports, electricity costs, waste management costs and broadband. Where is the innovation or the commitment to reform these to give our exporters a chance?

It is worth recalling the contrast between the past four years and the years when the rainbow Government was in power, when Deputy Ruairí Quinn was Minister for Finance and I was Minister for Enterprise and Employment. At that time the volume of exports was growing at 17%; now it has collapsed to just 6%. Under that Government, productivity was growing at 8% per annum; now it has collapsed to just 2%. Then, our market share increased by 25% in four years; this Government has cut it by 20% in four years. That is something a small open economy cannot tolerate and survive and thrive. That must change, but the start on that vital change was not made today.

As a people, we have taken great pride in the creation of a new Ireland in the past two or three decades. Families separated by emigration were reunited, young people leaving school were able to find good jobs in this country and towns and villages in danger of fading away returned to life. We grew anxious in recent years when the pressures of working in an economy of runaway house prices, jumbo mortgages, poor transport and expensive child care gradually choked the quality of many people's lives. However, people kept going and put their trust in Fianna Fáil, which promised it had everything under control. Fianna Fáil said it had a strategy for health care, school buildings and smaller class sizes, which is now gone. It had a strategy for spatial planning and climate change and it believed the property sector was based on sound economic fundamentals. Those plans and strategies have all proven to be hollow shells. When tested, they cracked and yielded little inside. We now know the trust in Fianna Fáil was misplaced. It was asleep at the wheel and had grown lazy and lethargic and increasingly incompetent. The Fianna Fáil economic miracle has turned into a mirage. The complacent Fianna Fáil message that it should be trusted on the grounds that it knows what it is doing is simply no longer holding up.

Even today, with a crisis on its doorstep, the Government has failed to grasp the profound changes that have affected our economic health and the far-reaching reforms that are called for. It has made a bad situation worse. The ordinary people will pay for its mistakes, not just today, which is clear, but in the future.

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