Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

I thank Deputy Penrose for giving me five minutes of his time and indeed, the Minister, for allowing this.

Everybody understood that this was going to be a tough budget, but what caused dismay was how pessimistic it was. It offered no hope as regards the challenges we and our constituents face, particularly in relation to unemployment. Factored into the budget was a greatly increased number of people coming on the dole, 75,000, instead of a calculated position that would provide opportunities for job creation in the course of the year.

Reform is a word that is used a good deal in this Chamber, but I felt, in particular, that no attempt was being made to reform the public service. We had an bord snip nua, Colm McCarthy's report. Most of us agreed with parts of it, while not everyone, even on the Government side, agreed with all of it. However, that was some type of template that the Government simply ignored when it came to dealing with reforming the way the State operates.

Even as late as today the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has had to extricate himself in a rather undignified fashion from a situation, essentially of his own making, as regards appointments to the RTE board and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. An bord snip nua said there should be no broadcasting authority but rather one regulator for communications in broadcasting. This would save money and be a streamlined approach to make Government work better. However, the Government does not care and is not interested in reform.

The Government is, however, interested in reducing people's incomes. I should like to put it on the public record that the next time somebody starts to bash the public sector we should remember the men who went out and kept our roads open all over Christmas and the new year. The only thanks they got at the end of that lengthy period, while the rest of us tried to enjoy ourselves, was less money in their pay packets. That is the reality of the Government approach to this. It is not reform but rather an attack on people with very modest incomes who deserve better.

As regards employment, there is nothing in this budget that opens up the opportunities that exist for us. It is extremely frustrating when one looks at the opportunities that are there, particularly in the area of renewables, in energy and the smart economy that everyone talks about. The reality, however, does not match the talk or the rhetoric. The Labour Party produced a document not long ago which clearly set out the fact that 80,000 jobs could be created in the energy sector if we had a Government willing to head up such an initiative. We itemised the areas, one of which is so simple that I challenge the Minister to look again at what he calls the national retrofit programme, which is included in the budget. Essentially, there is no additional money allocated. It is a grand name for funding that is already in place for various grant schemes that operate out of Sustainable Energy Ireland and some money that is allocated to local authorities.

If there are changes it will not be because there is additional funding. It will not mean that more people are taken on, construction and highly skilled workers who could be put to work retrofitting homes in a way that would meet the challenges we all face regarding climate change. It simply means there are some management reorganising schemes, and when one looks at the figures at the end of last year for the particular grant scheme which was introduced, where about €45 million was allocated - the home energy scheme - they show that something like €34 million remained unspent by the end of the year. There was what I would not quite consider to be manipulation, but certainly a little reorganisation to try to make the figures look good. However, the figures are actually damning when one considers the need to retrofit our buildings. We cannot continue to burn up fossil fuel and cause carbon emissions as we have done in the past. We can put people to work who have the skills and we can do so now. However, I regret deeply that the Minister has simply failed to consider the opportunity that existed under his nose in this budget to put people back to work.

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