Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The choices being made yesterday had to be made. The good aspect about this discourse is the Fine Gael Party, in accepting the parameters of €4 billion, set out a very different alternative strategy and a very different kind of budget where those vulnerable people, the carers, the disabled, the blind, the widows, the pensioners and the children, were protected and those in the other area of welfare who are available and able to work and willing to work, will be provided with challenges and training opportunities and jobs.

The Taoiseach has made a clear political choice. He may believe that the private sector which represents 60% of taxpayers, may feel that they have been left untouched by this budget simply because there is no increase in income tax. The levies now appear to be permanent and they will become permanent because the Taoiseach has not put in sufficient stimulus to create jobs in the way the Fine Gael Party presented its alternative budget. The difference between the two approaches is that the Fine Gael alternative budget was much fairer towards those working in the public service, particularly those at the lower end of the public service where every single one of the 55,000 employees working for less than €30,000 would have no cut and with proportionate cuts above that. The Minister's budget means that those on the lowest wages, earning the minimum wage, are now being forced to take the same proportion as the deception brought in by Ministers when they say they are taking a 15% cut in their own salaries to share the pain and to show leadership. This morning on radio the Minister for Social and Family Affairs said it would formalise a legal agreement of Ministers taking pay cuts of 15% when in reality this is only a 5% cut.

This is budget is a blunt instrument. It is about figures and not about people. There is to be only a 1% reduction in the administration budgets of most Departments and the FÁS budget has actually increased. This is evidence of retrenching within all Departments, a regrouping, a case of getting back to the basics of self-defence in different Departments. Over the past four months, Ministers were working in parallel lines as to what contribution they were being required to make in order to meet this demand for a cut of €4 billion, to see what they could lop off and what could not be lopped off under any circumstances, without any view as to how they would get the country back to work, of how jobs could be created and how we can trade our way out of this mess the Government has led us into. They have arrived at the same conclusion which Fine Gael has been preaching for the past five years, that they cannot tax their way out of it and that we must trade our way back. A jobs stimulus package must be implemented. It is not just a case of lowering the price of drink or such like.

The Taoiseach could have used a broader and fairer approach. In respect of the public service he could have decided last April to promise to look at the question of effective reform in order to bring about a leaner, more efficient public service and the delivery of that service. Fine Gael will see to it that managers down the line are given the responsibility and the opportunity to account for and be rewarded for what they do and if they wish to be transferred to whatever Departments might need them. The Taoiseach did not do this and he now has a sullen, deeply resentful public service. I do not believe that a rash of strikes will solve anything but there are people who are very vociferous on this issue.

Deep down within the public service there is now a realisation and an understanding that the structure of social partnership, inadequate though it was in many respects, is now dead and buried so far as Fianna Fáil, the Greens and the Independents are concerned. The retrenchment taking place in every Department is clearly seen as an act of self-defence, of regrouping and a hope that the difficult days will pass.

The message being sent abroad will be accepted by the international markets because it is about figures and not about people. It is not about fairness or otherwise. The Taoiseach has used a blunt instrument to reach a saving of €4 billion and this will be accepted by the international markets. What the Fine Gael Party proposed was so much stronger in the context of the private sector because it provided more stimulus for job creation, for young people, for those who have jobs and for those employers who want to want to hold on to those employees and for the rewarding of new initiatives and opportunities to create new jobs.

This is the way we will get out of this situation, not by talking about the Irish diaspora who are emigrants from our country and will work in Canada, America and Australia and Britain, like 100 nurses from the western region who have recently received letters of relocation to Whipps Cross Hospital and the Royal Berkshire Hospital in London and other places in Britain. The taxpayers have paid €90,000 to train each of those nurses and they will be giving their services abroad. There is no one to beat the quality, compassion and capacity of an Irish nurse and this is with due respect to other nationalities, yet they are being sent abroad because the Government presides over a health system which the Taoiseach knows does not deliver efficiency either for the patient or in terms of value for money. The system works very well once one is inside it but all the problems are associated with getting into the system.

I disagree with the view expressed in The Irish Times today that this budget is above sectoral politics. When we all talk about accountability and transparency then I say, good luck to the people in Kenmare. The leopard has not changed his spots. In this regard the former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, said in effect, "We get in here and we stay in here and we do whatever we have to do to stay in here and I will write whatever cheque I have to write for banks and I will do whatever I have to do to keep this going". The community hospital could be in Kenmare, Sneem, Barraduff, Killorglin, Dingle or it could be in Dundalk, Cashel, Monaghan or wherever else. What the Taoiseach has done in the middle of the deepest recession this wonderful democracy has ever experienced, an economic crisis caused by his party, is send his Whip up the steps to speak to the Independents and do secret deals. This is about politics and it is the reason I disagree with the Taoiseach that it is above sectoral politics or local interests. In one way the Taoiseach has not changed because this is about holding on to the Independents who, as we all know, are always on the plank waiting for a bigger ferry to come by as it sails to cleaner waters and ready to choose when to jump.

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