Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

This Government makes Houdini look like a one stroke banjo player. How it could turn a surplus of €3 billion into a deficit of €16 billion over a few short years is nothing short of remarkable. Perhaps when the Government Deputies, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party, the Progressive Democrats and others, were giving a standing ovation to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, it may have been in recognition of how he performed the magic trick of turning the finances around so quickly.

During that standing ovation, I had in mind the images of polling day in 2002 and in 2007. I was outside the polling station in Greystones on both occasions. I observed the young people going in to vote for the Government. The people living in the Dublin commuter belt came in their droves in the last hours of polling day to vote for the Government during the good times. I had another image of the public spending for 2001 and 2006. There is a strong correlation between the outcome of those elections and the public spending in the years preceding them. In many respects this is a lucky Government. There is a current global crisis which in part disguises the mess the Government has made of the public finances. The Government has contributed greatly to the crisis by allowing a money bubble rather than a property bubble to exist and develop. We allowed a money bubble to develop by a failure to regulate and to take measures to deal with it. We failed to see what was coming down the line because we were too busy partying, too busy spending the public's money.

I read the first paragraph of the Taoiseach's article in today's newspaper. He wrote about the stark choices facing the public. We have always had choices and over the past 11 years this Government availed of the choice to spend like a drunken sailor as if there was no tomorrow. It is not as if people were not articulating an alternative view. My party leader, Deputy Enda Kenny and the finance spokesperson, Deputy Richard Bruton, have for the past six years outlined the dangers coming down the track but their voices were drowned out by the applause and the popping of champagne corks.

The waste has been unbelievable and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. The programme-makers in "Prime Time Investigates" need not worry about finding subject matter for several years, with PPARS and e-voting and many new projects coming on stream.

My constituency has suffered as a result of the waste of public money. I am sorry that the Minister of State, Deputy Mansergh, has left the Chamber. He arrived in Arklow a few weeks ago to inspect the water. He was the fourth Minister over the past 11 years to inspect the flooded households in Arklow but nothing has been done. In 2002, the then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Cullen, gave a commitment that if a scheme and a report were produced, funding would be available for flood relief but nothing has happened.

The Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, has withdrawn funding for the N11. The former Taoiseach gave a commitment in the weeks preceding the last general election that this very dangerous stretch of 11 km or 12 km from the Beehive pub to the Arklow bypass would be dealt with. This is one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the country where people have lost their lives. However, the work has been shelved. The commitment was given but it was broken. I will not list all the school building projects. One small rural school in Lacken was granted €800,000 to build a school. They employed architects, obtained planning permission and the agreement of local landowners but the project was shelved. The farming community has been decimated. In the budget of 2001, the roll over relief and disease levies were withdrawn and farmers reacted with a tractorcade. I am sure the farming community is feeling pretty sore this morning.

Deputy Hogan alluded to the fact that most of the details of the budget appeared in the newspapers in days preceding its announcement. Before the Budget Statement was read, the Ceann Comhairle issued a warning that all the contents of the Minister's speech were confidential and should not be divulged outside the House until the Minister had delivered it. Yet, virtually every aspect of the budget had been available in the weeks beforehand. This gives me cause for concern because I am conscious of the strict rules about Cabinet confidentiality, as epitomised by the Ceann Comhairle's warning, but these rules are completely blown away. I ask the Taoiseach to come to the House and along with the Minister for Finance, to outline how these details were made public.

Mistakes have been made in the budget and these have been highlighted by many speakers. The Executive is too powerful in this Parliament. The Oireachtas has virtually no power because all power lies with the Executive. The Fine Gael finance spokesperson put forward proposals that the budget details should be debated beforehand and there was no debate on the Estimates this year. An open and frank debate is desirable. The confidentiality issue is clearly irrelevant because the information is given out to the media beforehand. If we had debated the issues the Government might not have run into the difficulty over the medical card issue. I am sure the vast majority of Members disagree with the proposal introduced by the Executive. It gives rise to a poor democracy when an Executive can overrule the views of the majority of the Parliament. Although I am not privy to what happens at the meetings of the parliamentary parties of this House, I could confidently predict that if there was an open vote on the medical cards issue it would not get through this House. We must examine this. Instead of investing all the power in the Executive, we should have a more open debate on such issues and the Government should be willing to chop and change. Budgets are about stark choices, especially this one. It did not have to be a stark choice. It was a stark choice because when the Government looked at two roads in a yellow wood it took the road that was more, not less, travelled by. It made no difficult decisions. It has bought and appeased the electorate over the past decade, bringing in many measures that were unsustainable in good or bad times.

In many respects the medical card is a very emotive and serious issue. To me it is the red flag issue in this budget but it disguises very serious issues elsewhere. The 1% income levy is the most draconian measure in the budget. Let us assume the Government had to get the funding that would bring in. Why did it not develop it differently by starting the 1% at €40,000 or €45,000 and move on to 2% after €60,000 or €70,000? Someone on the basic industrial wage will be hit by a 1% levy. Despite claims that this budget protects the most vulnerable, the 1% levy does not; it treats rich and poor almost equally. The Government should have examined putting this on a band level, rather than the 1% catching everybody up to €100,000. It is completely unfair and I ask the Minister for Finance to go back and examine restructuring this 1% levy, notwithstanding that we on this side of the House do not agree with the increased taxes.

The capital gains, the levy, DIRT, VAT and the increase in petrol tax will all contract the economy and help dampen consumer confidence. When we want to reward confidence, enterprise and innovation the Government has come with draconian measures to further suppress the economy. Foreign affairs was one of the few areas that went untouched, albeit funding for overseas development aid was reduced.

Tax relief has been provided for cycling to work. I questioned the Minister here and sought to provoke him into giving me an explanation on how this will operate. It sounds nice in the budget but I predict it will never come to fruition because it cannot be managed. How will we manage a tax relief for cycling to work? I see Deputy Sargent coming in with his bicycle and holdall bag. I see Deputy Gormley hopping on his bicycle and coming into Government Buildings. Conveniently he always seems to cycle towards the cameras. How will this operate? If a provision is in the budget the Government should be able to outline how it will operate, not say the Department is devising a system. How can one make an announcement without knowing how it will operate?

I will make another prediction: the €200 charge per car parking space will not come to fruition. It is virtually impossible to police and to draw up a guideline for it. There are many people in this city who go to work at certain times for whom there is no way to get to work other than by car. Again, I call on some Government speaker to outline how these proposals will be implemented. They cannot and will not. Those measures are there as a kind of psychological sop to the green element of this budget.

There have been massive increases in school transport, particularly at primary level but also at secondary level and this flies in the face of the so-called attempt to cut down on the use of private transport and use public transport. College registration fees have increased from €900 to €1,500. The Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, need not worry about reintroducing university fees because they are being brought in by the back and front doors.

The first time I spoke on a budget here I welcomed certain aspects of it, but there is nothing in this budget I can welcome. It will help ensure the economy contracts further. It will dampen consumer confidence. Over the last year Fine Gael has outlined what should have been done through our document Recovery Through Reform. This Government has made one more mistake and I only hope the public remembers what it has done. I will finish where I started, saying the Government put Houdini in the halfpenny place.

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