Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

We can all add; this is not complicated. There is less tax revenue coming in to the State. We heard the figures in this regard yesterday. The Minister for Finance says there will be no new budget and no additional taxes. There will, therefore, be what the Taoiseach calls "economies" or "adjustments", which basically amount to cuts in expenditure. I want to know how this will be achieved. Will the Taoiseach and Minister for Finance come before the House at some stage and tell us what is the plan in this regard or will they allow the next couple of weeks to run ahead and then, during the Christmas and New Year period, allow individual Ministers and the Minister for Finance to do this by way of departmental decision without any presentation in this House of what is being done?

It is all very well for the Taoiseach to say the Government is engaging in a strategy. We do not know what that strategy is as it has never been outlined by Government. In so far as we get glimpses of it occasionally from speeches the Taoiseach makes in the House and radio interviews by the Minister for Finance, all we get are contradictions. The Taoiseach cannot one minute say we have a capital programme and then say we must cut back on it.

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