Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

How could Members on that side of the House expect the most vulnerable in society to accept the contents of that budget? It would be funny only that it has turned out to be so disastrous.

The budget was brought forward. The day I heard the Taoiseach say that it was the answer to the problem and that the Government was doing something, I decided it was a fig leaf. It takes time and commitment to get a budget balanced, particularly in bad times. I have ideas about what went wrong. As a result of the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill that was passed the week before the budget, the Government thought it was walking on water in the worst of times and that it could dish out anything. We are far away from the 1930s and 1940s now.

The vulnerable people in society knew it was not fair. It was in their heads — it was a psychological matter. The ink was not dry on the budget before people said this. There is no group more disorganised than the elderly. They do not pay into any group, they are very peaceful but they knew that the Government was trying to protect the super rich. They knew it was not a balanced budget. They knew it in their hearts and souls. A Fianna Fáil Government of ten, 20 or 30 years ago would not have done it. The Government got drunk on power. The greed and arrogance of this Government comes from the fact that whatever happened over the past ten years, it thought it could be solved by throwing money at it. That is what the Government did because it had the money. In the ten minutes at my disposal, I do not have the time to go back through the rigamarole of where money solved problems that should not have been solved by money. Good, prudent management was needed at that stage but we did not have it.

How many times did I hear the Taoiseach and the former Taoiseach tell us that the fundamentals of the economy were right and there were 2 million people at work? What sort of work were they doing and how productive was it? The vast majority were working in the building industry, building houses to sell to one another. The only ones carrying the cot now are the thousands of young men and women who paid twice the going rate for a house, which they will be paying for over the next 35 years, while the house will be worth half what it should have been.

My party backed the bank guarantee scheme not for the golden circle people or for the banks, but for the ordinary depositors all over Ireland. We gave it our full support and rightly so. I remember the Minister mentioning that the banks informed him that they had about €15 billion of assets on their books for which there was no return because the builders could not sell and it was toxic borrowing. There is a smell from that €15 billion and I think the sum is far greater than €15 billion.

Perhaps I am on my own in this House in this but I do not believe the bankers have the slightest intention of allowing the taxpayer or the Government to direct them in anything. One need just listen to the interview given by the chief executive of Bank of Ireland on the radio the other day. The man was surprised and disappointed that a reporter asked him to comment on what would happen in the banking world in the future. There has been a particular culture in the banks down through the years. As they see it, they run their economy and are there to make money for the shareholders and how dare any Government get involved. The guarantee from the Government is that people will be appointed to act as watchdogs. We will come back to it in a year's time and see where we are going. For every small depositor, investor and person who has an iota of an idea of creating a job, I sincerely hope this will work but I greatly doubt it.

I referred to a fair and reasonable budget. The Government then turned around and decided to take out other vulnerable people in society. The Government had a go at the disabled but that had to be changed. It was the first budget in my 30 years here that was apologised for every day until a couple of weeks ago. Every Minister and Green Deputy apologised to the people for the hurt caused to them. That is some budget in a time when one expects the people of Ireland to tighten belts and that, in unison with one another, as a nation we would try to come out of one of the worst recessions I have ever seen.

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