Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It would be helpful if we knew how many weeks the Taoiseach had in mind. We should be told when the supplementary budget will be introduced. The Taoiseach should stop dancing around this.

One of the issues about which I am concerned is the extent to which the Taoiseach and the Government are on top of this. On the public finances, the Government has now had five different attempts at it. It had one in July, when it said it was €400 million; it had the October budget, when it said it was approximately €2 billion; it then had the announcement of further cuts in December; it had the further announcement of the levy and so on in February, which was for €2 billion; and now we have another budget. The Tánaiste last week told the country that the public finances were under control but within a week we have an announcement of a supplementary budget.

To be fair to the Tánaiste, she is not the only one. Exactly one month ago in this House when I asked the Taoiseach about the then unemployment figures, he stated: "To impose a further tax burden at this point in the cycle would depress demand even further". He went on to say it was not an option he wanted to consider. The difficulty we all have is that from month to month and from week to week the position of the Taoiseach and the Government in regard to the public finances appears to be shifting.

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