Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)

The Green Party has a role in Cabinet responsibility, as it has two senior Ministers in Deputies Gormley and Ryan. They sat around the Cabinet table as these decisions were made.

Fine Gael has offered alternatives through our finance spokesperson, Deputy Richard Bruton. Such alternatives are worth listening to and implementing. Over the past number of years the Government was able to throw money at every problem in every corner of the country and had no difficulty doing so. There was €10,000 here, €50,000 or €100,000 there and €200,000 somewhere else. That money was tossed around by the Government over the past number of years without care. There was no responsibility for spending or consideration for the future. Such spending produced PPARS and electronic voting machines, which annoyed the public, but the public is also dissatisfied with the Government because of the decisions made in the recent budget.

I have no doubt the Minister of State has listened to some of the concerns of his constituents. We will feel the detrimental effects of this budget for many years. I listened to the comments made by a backbench Deputy on one of the national radio stations and it was mentioned that the decision on class sizes would be reversed within a year or two. However, I believe once the Government has decided to increase class sizes, it will never roll it back. One should consider the anger felt by parents about what has happened in the education sector. The Government has completely neglected the most important people in our society, the young people we will depend on to take up qualifications in the future.

There is no doubt that the Government went for the soft options in this budget, hitting, as I mentioned earlier, the most vulnerable. The longer this Government continues in office, the longer it will keep its head in the sand. Its members are drunk on power, arrogant and totally out of touch. They are not living in reality. Some of the senior Ministers are going around believing there is no problem and that everything is okay when it is not.

I would like the Government to listen to what the ordinary person on the ground is saying. It could have made tougher decisions in other areas but it chose not to do so. I was very annoyed about some of the decisions in this budget.

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