Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

It is stunning. All told, the taxpayer could be on the hook for a cool €15 billion over the next two years to fulfil Fianna Fáil's strategy for the banks. This assumes NAMA breaks even and does not become a multi-billion euro drain on the taxpayer each year. The what may be termed the "washing one's face exercise" about NAMA is only for the first few months to the first year of its operation. These numbers put today's horror budget in the ha'penny place.

The Minister should not pretend there is no link between the rescue of Anglo Irish Bank and the budget crisis we face. That pretence is at the heart of his budget strategy. It has those two faces - one is the harsh discipline for every citizens, including social welfare recipients and public servants, and the other is the blank cheque to transfer the debts of bankrupt developers to the taxpayer.

The bond market and not the EU Commission will make the call on our national solvency. Bond investors are fully aware of Government borrowing under every heading. A borrowed euro is a borrowed euro no matter how it is described. The issue for bond investors is the risk of default. Borrowing to shore up a zombie bank commands a higher risk premium than borrowing for reflation. The Government should think about that.

In the past few months, the Government has relied heavily on an echo chamber of sympathetic voices to make its case in the media. This echo chamber has drowned out the voices of anyone who wished to make a sane case for a different approach to economic recovery. It is not healthy in a pluralist society to have only one set of opinions repeated day in, day out as gospel truth. We are paying a ghastly price for allowing this to happen in the boom years when all sanity went out the window and any dissenting voice got short shrift and when a Taoiseach suggested the suicide option to anyone who did not like what was happening in our country.

The echo chamber recycles the same mantras, namely, there is no alternative, it is the only game in town, we are where we are and the blame game will get us nowhere. We hear these repeated ad nauseam and any deviation from the line is rejected out of hand. We experienced it heavily in the debate on the bank guarantee and when we hear the green jersey slogan trotted out by Fianna Fáil, we know something dodgy is afoot; so it proved in the case of the Anglo Irish Bank shenanigans which has cost us so much in cash and reputation.

Let us have no more of this. Cuts are not the only option for national recovery and there is a case for stimulus and an alternative to NAMA. It is time to restate the case for equality as a major force in policy. Societies that value equality and promote it in their economies have succeeded best, and the evidence has been painstakingly collected over 30 years and published in the past year. It promotes better health, a better quality of life, better educational outcomes, a better sense of security and well-being.

This budget does nothing to make Ireland a more equal society. It goes in exactly the wrong direction. It will increase personal stress, erode confidence, and damage social solidarity. Its economic effects may well be calamitous and its social effects certainly will be.

I recommend that the Labour Party vote down this budget. In the examples at the back of the budget we have Eileen and Dominic, one of whom is a civil servant and the other is a house husband. They face a cut in their gross pay of €2,625 a year, or approximately €50 per week. In this example there a child in the pre-school age group so they are credited with a gain from the Government of nearly €2,500. In a second example, of Kate and David, their losses are €2,600 a year, which is over €50 per week or 4% of their income. There is no adjustment at the upper end of the scale.

Many civil servants are willing to make sacrifices but the mantra that everybody wants to hear is about fairness. Those who have the most should bear a proportionate share of the burden that they are better fitted to carry. It is a regrettable budget for carers. The cut of €8.30 a week in respect of them does not mean an awful lot to many in here because Deputies are well paid and we can take our share of any cuts imposed on us. I feel sorry for people like carers and widows. I know the McCarthy report felt that widows seemed to have it easy but many widows, particularly younger widows, do not have it that easy. The reduction of €8.30 a week will come hard to them on top of a reduction of €4 per week in child benefit for each child.

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