Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Where is the fairness in targeting hard-working families who may be burdened with negative equity and who have rising utility bills and the prospect of even more expensive mortgages?

Ireland also desperately needed a budget with a clear and credible plan to grow the economy and give our young people some hope for the future. What we got instead was a budget that contains no strategy for growth, no strategy for reform and no strategy for jobs beyond the bland statement which is here, which the Taoiseach has repeated on a dozen occasions in the past 12 months, that his plan says 300,000 jobs over the next five years. The Taoiseach has never backed up any one of those jobs with concrete evidence.

There is nothing in this budget that comes any way close to matching either the scale or the ambition of Fine Gael's NewERA stimulus plan to create jobs and to improve competitiveness. Likewise, there is no plan to reform the public sector or to change the way the political system works. These are three fundamental failures of the Government. Even relatively minor proposals, such as Fine Gael's suggestion that the jobs tax on low-income employees should be reduced, have been rejected even though we have shown how they could be paid for through aggressive cost reductions in the public services.

This stale, unfair and out-of-touch budget confirms one point clearly. The Government is exhausted, jaded and out of ideas.

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