Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

This section of the budget caused me some surprise. Will the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment tell us the expected take from the increases in excise in the budget? I thought there was scope for the Government to do more in this area than it has done because it would raise money immediately and do so more fairly than applying levies that hit the pay packets of working people.

Strong cases have been made on health grounds for increased excises on tobacco and alcohol. The Minister for Finance referred in his statement today to cross-Border smuggling in respect of alcohol, tobacco and, I think, petrol. RTE recently screened a very good documentary about smuggling, particularly of cigarettes which made clear that enforcement is the problem. The customs and excise officers catch some of the smugglers but are not able to bring them to court or when they do the fines are so derisory as to make a joke of the process. If the Government made some serious effort on the enforcement side it would be able to get a higher take in this area.

I agree with my colleagues who have spoken about the bizarre decision to increase the excise on diesel but not on petrol. The Minister rightly spoke today about competitiveness and the need to get costs down in the economy and to do things that will encourage employment. Diesel is employment-related. We live on an island and so have high transport costs but this measure will add to those costs and will have a knock-on effect on employment.

Was the Green Party at the Cabinet table when decisions were made on this budget? I can find some evidence in the statement of the Government's having taken on board some of the suggestions Fine Gael and the Labour Party made in our respective pre-budget statements. I can find no evidence of anything that is even remotely close to something the Greens might have wished to achieve in this budget. This measure in particular baffles me completely because I would have thought, for the reasons that Deputies Coveney and McManus have stated, that it would have been the reverse.

See this speech in context