Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government throws money away on discredited voting machines at a cost of €52 million, as well as a cost of €500,000 per annum for storing them. Why not provide savings from the e-voting fiasco by financing better housing insulation through the warmer homes scheme that only got €1 million extra and thus save money on energy bills for those who participate in the scheme? What is stopping the Minister from selling off those machines? It has perplexed me and the rest of the public. Has he not received permission from Fianna Fáil to do so? Why is that?

The people of Ireland expected that the participation of the Green Party in Government would mean a genuine change in patterns of behaviour relating to the environment. We were told that the party had a solemn commitment in the programme for Government to a green energy revolution, that we could expect to see radical policies to tackle climate change and that the tax system was to be used to drive change and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We were all told that climate change is one of the most important issues to face the planet. However, all we have seen in this budget is a change in the tax code at the behest of the Green Party to provide relief to the purchase of a bicycle to the value of €1,000. The Green Party has signed up with Fianna Fáil to increasing taxes on everything and on everyone, including the income of the lower paid, and on withdrawing medical cards from pensioners over 70 years of age.

The Minister of State, Deputy Mansergh, mentioned the considerable progression of the 1% income levy that was implemented in 1983 and 1993 by successive Governments, in which the low paid were exempted. There was no question of doing that this time because the Minister for Finance needed the money. He took the easy option to tax everybody irrespective of means, including people on the minimum wage. I wonder how that will give people an incentive to work.

The Green Party leader has justified his mantra of tax increases for commuters in this budget by extolling the decisions to raise motor tax, to raise tax on petrol, to impose car parking charges wherever he can, especially in the private sector, to introduce a new airport tax and to cut the public transport investment programme by €70 million. At a time when the people of the commuter belt are stressed enough, we are saddling about €2,500 in taxes per annum on families who are struggling to make ends meet. These are the coping classes of our country and they are certainly going to suffer as a result of these decisions.

At a time of increasing costs in business and employment, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party announce a car park levy of €200 for workers, but did nothing about the €9 million in expenditure for renting 4,000 spaces for public servants. Instead of starting with the private sector with a car parking levy, why not start with the public sector? The Minister should clarify to the House how this €200 per space scheme will be administered, because I believe that it will be an administrative nightmare. We would have looked very carefully at the need to introduce a scheme where we could save the taxpayer a considerable amount of money on spaces for public servants, rather than implementing it in a ham-fisted way in the private sector.

The Minister should have aimed to make an impact on national carbon emissions. The national climate change strategy, revealed before the last general election, should be torn up at this stage. It is well out of date and the policies being pursued are doing nothing to hit the 3% average reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that was promised in the programme for Government. We could do a lot more by getting more buses on the road and by allowing bus competition. The buses are there, but the political will is not. We should not be scaling back on public transport investment programmes and cutting back on the national development programme, which we were told was sacrosanct by the then Minister for Finance before the last election. We in Fine Gael have pointed out ways in which we can bring income into this programme, but that has been ignored by the current Minister for Finance.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government was quite boastful in the last budget about the level of support he was giving to the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Heritage Council, who were doing outstanding work. It is regrettable that he has agreed to impose substantial cuts in respect of those agencies in 2009. The Minister also spoke at length on the issue of public transport last month and stated that the Green Party's priority was to invest heavily in public transport and away from roads. His comments in recent days suggest that he has given up on that priority as well. We all hear about plans for metro north and metro west, but we all know that these projects are being put back and will be staggered over a period of years rather than receive any meaningful expenditure in the short term. That may be the right thing to do, but we cannot promote public transport and implement policies for commuters when they have no option but to use a car. If the Minister, Deputy Gormley, and the Green Party get their way, those people will have no option but to go on a bicycle. That seems to be their priority.

This budget has received a lot of air time and mileage in the media. A surplus of €3 billion was turned into a deficit of €16 billion in a matter of three years. People are asking where all the money went. Where did it all go wrong? We cannot blame international factors all of the time for the fact that we have such a gaping black hole in our nation's finances. There was an opportunity over the past ten or 15 years to invest heavily to cure the deficits in our infrastructural capacity and to build a platform of sustainability. The Government refused to do that because it was hell bent on making sure that the investors in housing stayed in the market place. The Government was hell bent on ensuring we had 25% of all our tax take in the construction sector.

Many people have been disappointed by this budget with regard to the pupil-teacher ratio in education, cuts in the early retirement scheme and the farm installation aid scheme for young people in agriculture. There have been cutbacks in many of the promises that were made only a short time ago. I refer to the budget speech made by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Cowen, when he stated that the fundamentals of the economy were strong, that we were in a stable financial position, that the nation's finances were on an even keel and that no adjustments were required. We now see that the chickens have come home to roost. The wrong emphasis and the wrong policies were pursued for short-term gain. In the run-up to the two elections in 2002 and 2007, the public expenditure which was out of control on those occasions brought about a situation where public servants were pumped into the Departments for political expediency. Those people are now coming under the microscope and will be taken out of the system by possible generous redundancy packages to be announced in due course. The question of public sector reform is an issue that is high in the minds of the Taoiseach, Deputy Cowen and the Minister of State, Deputy McGuinness who accused people of being square pegs in round holes. However, the budget speech contained nothing about public service reform. There were no plans announced to give people an incentive to give greater productivity in both the public and private sectors. This is the challenge for the future if we want to bring our nation's finances back on an even keel.

It is ironic and interesting that the problem for the Fianna Fáil backbenchers of the over-70s medical card comes from the same ministry where in 2001 the Minister did not know the extent of the problem with regard to the financing of nursing homes. That Minister, Deputy Micheál Martin, was a man who did not read his brief properly.

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