Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

It is quite amazing how the Minister for Finance could keep a straight face when he described the budget as a "call to patriotic action". Where were the calls to the wealthy to be patriotic during the Celtic tiger years? Many of the so-called patriots, the tycoons and multi-millionaires who were pampered by the Government, are tax exiles who pose as great Irishmen and women when they are in this country but who hide their riches away in tax havens so they do not have to pay their fair share here. For those who were not tax exiles there were massive tax breaks throughout the terms of office of Fianna Fáil-led Governments over the past decade. The wealthy were allowed to avoid tax in a myriad of different ways while ordinary PAYE workers bore the burden, as they always have. Property was God and Charlie McCreevy was the high priest, followed closely by the present Taoiseach in his years as Minister for Finance.

The tent at the Galway races has been folded up, but the fat cats have not gone away you know. As in all recessions, wealth will be less conspicuous but the wealthy will still prosper while the mass of the people pay for the greed and mismanagement of the Ministers and their friends who wined and dined in that famous tent. Fianna Fáil-led Governments and their friends, the property speculators and developers, the stock-brokers and the bankers, have created this massive economic mess. Will they own up and pay the price? Not at all. It is the people who will be made to pay the price. Yesterday the first instalments of that price were extracted in what can only be described as a shameful and disgraceful budget. It is a budget of savage cuts in public services and widespread new charges and taxes that will penalise those on low to middle incomes. Yet, the Minister urges us to be patriotic. James Connolly wrote about patriotism: "True patriotism seeks the welfare of each in the happiness of all, and is inconsistent with the selfish desire for worldly wealth which can only be gained by the exploitation of less favoured fellow-mortals."

The levy of 1% on incomes below €100,000 per annum represents a significant increase in tax for the lowest paid. Even those on incomes below the tax threshold, those who pay no income tax at present, will be hit with this levy. It is totally regressive and inequitable. The Government trumpeted the miserly half of 1% pay rise for the low paid in the recent social partnership agreement. Now they have wiped it out and taken money away from the low paid. The same low paid families will suffer disproportionately from VAT increases, health charge increases, the cut in child benefit for 18-year old children, the cut-off of child care supplement at five and half years of age and the whole range of other hidden charges and taxes arising from the budget. That is on top of rising prices for food that are hitting poorer families hardest.

On the very day of the budget one of the largest hospitals in the country, Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda, turned away emergency medical and surgical cases because its accident and emergency department could not cope. Then we saw the minimal increase in the health budget for 2009, which is well below inflation and will lead to massive cutbacks across the health services. I have no doubt people will suffer and die avoidable deaths as a result.

Means testing for medical cards for older people are being reintroduced, another example of the totally incoherent health policy of the Government. The automatic entitlement for the over-70s was introduced with great fanfare and now it is being taken away, causing huge confusion, anger and distress to older people. My Dáil office and those of my colleagues and our party ard oifig have been receiving telephone calls all day from older people who are incensed by this decision. Sinn Féin said when this scheme was introduced that if the principle of universal entitlement was accepted for the over 70s, it should be accepted for all, but now the Government has taken a further step away from the type of universal public health care that we desperately need. At the same time people are being forced to pay higher charges for accident and emergency visits and for medicines.

Even before this budget, the public health system was being hit hard by cuts. Hospital services are being closed for weeks on end at the end of the year to stay within HSE budgets. Home help hours have been cut. In the north-east region there have been cuts in orthopaedic services and dermatology. I learned yesterday that there is a five year waiting list for dermatology in Tallaght hospital. Surgical beds at Dundalk are to be reduced from 32 to eight from next Monday. The axe continues to fall on services at Monaghan General Hospital where all acute medical services are scheduled to transfer to Cavan General Hospital by the end of next month.

During the summer two senior doctors were let go from Dundalk hospital, in Crumlin children's hospital there was a ward closure affecting children with cystic fibrosis, in Letterkenny General Hospital a 20-bed ward was closed for the summer and there was a scaling back of day services. These are only some of the cuts. I shudder to think of what awaits us in the public health services in 2009. What now of the 2007 Green Party manifesto which said "Access to appropriate health care is a basic human right"?

Of course the fat cats will not be affected by these health cuts. They will be able to avail of the private hospitals provided for them by the Government at taxpayers' expense. The cost to the Exchequer of tax breaks to developers of private hospitals rose from €1.9 million in 2004 to €10.6 million in 2006, which is information provided by the Minister for Health and Children. The cost in 2006 alone would have funded more than 6,000 extra full medical cards for a year.

The story is the same in education. The rise in class sizes and the cut in teacher numbers is a disgrace. Once again schools in less well-off areas will suffer most.

There are no measures to address the massive child care deficit in this country. As a result of the budget there will be fewer child care places and child care services here, already the most expensive in Europe, will rise even higher. To rub salt in the wound, the Minister has cut off the early child care supplement at five and half years of age.

It is a myth that spending on public services has been too high, a myth I want to blow out of the water. Cutbacks in public services are totally unacceptable. Before the budget we were already spending the third least on public services in the European Union, followed only by Estonia and Lithuania.

We said in our budget submission in 2004 that public goods are worth financing. They should not be treated as expendable and thus the most convenient place to cut. Well managed short to medium-term investment will often yield medium to long-term savings as other direct and indirect costs are reduced. The health service is the prime example of how cuts and underfunding, which were seen as short term, have had the unintended consequence of driving up costs and significantly reducing efficiency in the longer term. Thus, value for money is complex, can only be accurately gauged in the medium to long term and cannot always be equated with spending less. That is a lesson the Government refuses to learn and it is leaving a terrible legacy for the future.

The budget is very bad news for the Border region also, apart from all the other issues, including the fact that we will suffer most from the cuts in health spending. There is a major question mark over the completion of the N2-A5 route realignment from Monaghan town to the Border, which includes the proposed bypass of Emyvale, and Monaghan military barracks is to close, removing another local source of social and economic activity.

In the past decade the inequalities in this economy have been repeatedly identified and analysed and positive policies have been promoted by the Combat Poverty Agency. The budget, which will foster further inequality and poverty, is also the budget that has tried to gag the Combat Poverty Agency, a move I can only describe as breathtaking in its arrogance. The future of the Money Advice and Budgeting Service has also been put in doubt, a service that will be needed more than ever after this budget.

I emphasise what I said outside this Chamber. This budget is a recipe for emigration and the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, will be standing at the airport to take €10 flight tax out of the emigrants' pockets as they queue up to leave. Sinn Féin rejects this budget as we reject the policies which fostered inequality, which led directly to this recession and which have now spawned this monstrous budget. We will oppose the Government, defend public services and promote policies that will create employment and revive our economy based on sound foundations. We will be here to challenge the Government to the end.

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