Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

The Government has made two huge blunders in two years, and it is all to do with lack of fairness. The year before last it made the monumental mistake of treating the elderly in the worst possible fashion in terms of medical cards. Thousands of them marched outside this House. The reason they came to Dublin was because they believed they were being discriminated against and that others were getting a better deal than them. It was reasonable to assume at that stage that whatever else one does, admittedly in the worst of times, one would not make the same mistake the second time.

This is a central issue of fairness, and it has as much to do with perception as anything else. The people who are earning the €30,000, of whom there are many in the public service, genuinely believe that the people at the top are getting away with something they are denied. The Minister of State can put any spin he likes on it, and he can stay here until tomorrow and talk about bonuses and performance bonuses, how they are calculated and so on, but that is the bottom line.

I want to record that what the Government did to the people earning up to €30,000 was shameful. Deputy Richard Bruton's proposal was the plank of the Fine Gael alternative budget and it stood up to every kind of scrutiny. It was tested inside out and the people earning up to €30,000 would not be penalised with the 5% deduction. That is the reason the Government is in trouble today. It is facing more trouble that we can see at the moment, and I hope it will not develop, but there is so much anger at that level. People are asking how the Government expects them to make a living, and the banks and building societies are about to raise the mortgage rates again. How does the Government think these people can live? I have nothing against the cohort of people involved. I am sure they are hard-working people, but it appears they are not being treated in the same way as the people lower down in the grades. No matter how one analyses it, that is what has happened.

I saw a photograph of the Minister of State's colleague, Deputy Mattie McGrath, in the newspaper the other day and he was dancing a four hand reel. He will be dancing tomorrow, but it will be a fast jig to get out of the way of the journalists because if ever he led them by the nose, Mattie did it this time.

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