Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I also worry about the Minister's approach to those who have lost their jobs. We need to think much more outside the box about protecting the unemployed and finding opportunities for them. I welcome the Minister's back to education scheme, which will be available to people three months earlier than was previously the case, but people will still have to be unemployed for nine months before they can take up a third level course. That is not appropriate at a time like this. We need to get people to move quickly and not have a long period of idleness. Cutting the enterprise support scheme from four years to two does not seem a sensible suggestion at a time when start-up businesses will be working in a very difficult environment. It seems a short-sighted saving that is not motivated to getting small enterprises going by those who have lost their jobs. It seems unfair and niggardly in its approach. It is a slide-rule approach to making savings, instead of a helpful one. Meanwhile, the ordinary back-to-work scheme has been axed altogether, which is a strange decision at a time when we ought to reach out to those who have lost their jobs in order to offer them opportunities.

The underlying problem, which we have always refused to face up to, is the dysfunctional nature of this budget. The budget's composition is always the same. There was no advance scrutiny of the options and no efficiency targets or targets of any sort. It is based entirely on last year's money and whether we will reduce it by 1% or 2%. There is no root and branch examination of what is being done. We, in Fine Gael, advocated turning that system on its head. We argued that budgets in future should not be about the demands of agencies but about the needs of clients and ordinary people, that agencies should be forced to bid for their money and that if they are not performing, managers should be expected to shape up or ship out. We need that sort of transformation in the way we think of our public services.

Delivering a public service is a great honour but we have trapped people in the public service in a system that is failing them. The budgetary system and a soft option approach to politics, one which we saw in decentralisation, are failing them. We need to release the talent in our public service and reward those people of ambition who want to make change and drive standards. Our system does not do this. It tells people that when money is short, one closes hospital beds and wards and turns away patients. What enterprising and ambitious public servant wants to respond that way? People who want successful organisations want the opportunity to run more patients through their system, be more efficient and be rewarded for the extra patients they treat.

We are stuck in the old budgeting system that has trapped talented public servants, whose talent we now need more than ever, in a straitjacket that is not rewarding or encouraging their talent. That has to change but, again, there is no sign of change in this budget. There is no talk of a new deal for moving staff to areas of need or of rationalising quangos which remain as numerous as ever. Work on the programme the Minister offered last year remains as slow as a snail. We are not seeing a Government that is willing to shape up to the huge need to reduce the cost of running government, run government more efficiently and squeeze out and encourage performance. That should have been the clarion call underpinning the budget today. At a time of crisis, this nettle should have been seized. People will suffer because it was not seized, because it means that as budgets go scarce, we will see the old approach again. Schemes such as the home help service and nursing home support will be squeezed for want of money as the year ticks on because the reform agenda has not been boldly seized.

The problem we have in this country is that we have a Government which simply would not heed the warning signs. Time after time, it was told of the dangers that were occurring. Our competitiveness entered the red zone in 2002 when it started to deteriorate. The housing market entered the red zone in 2005 when the IMF issued warnings. The reliance of banks on short-term money entered the red zone in 2005 when we could see them sucking in huge amounts of short-term money not supported by the deposit base. The public finances started to go into the red zone when Ministers pumped spending before elections and benchmarking was paid without looking for anything in return. All of those who issued warnings to the Government that the position was not sustainable were cast aside and contemptuously dismissed. We were told time after time that the property bubble was built on sound economic fundamentals, competitiveness was fine and we did not have to worry about our banks. How wrong that was and how much Irish people have paid for the refusal of Ministers to heed the warnings that were given.

I saw a film recently with Anthony Hopkins called "The Edge" about a man in the wilderness struggling to survive. Hopkins's character made the comment that most people who die in the wilderness die of shame. We have been led into the wilderness by this Government. There is a creeping sense that it does not know how to fix what it has broken and the risk is that we are seeing a Government that is dying of shame as it tries to face problems and that is not carving out the solutions which will resolve these problems and help the country regain its independence. Will the Government die of shame and take our economic independence with it? That is the worry that is on people's minds.

It seems this Government believes it will be the first administration in the history of the world to work its way out of a depression and recession by taxing and more taxing. We stated clearly that the response in this budget had to be built on jobs, jobs and more jobs. It had to be about how we could protect, create opportunities and make sure the tax changes we made were sympathetic to employment as well as how we could make sure the burden between cutting spending and increasing taxes was on the side of more cuts in spending rather than more tax increases. Those were the challenges we faced and that was the framework which should have informed the budget.

We were told just two years ago that 97% of workers would be better off under Fianna Fáil. I do not think many of those workers would agree now.

See this speech in context