Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

Teddy Roosevelt said of America, "This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in". That should have been the principle that characterised this budget, but in the opposite principle was at its heart. The template of the budget was unfairness. We were told that the new universal social charge was a proposal to simplify the taxation system by amalgamating the income levy and the health levy. In fact it is a device to bring the lowest paid, who were heretofore exempted because of their low pay and vulnerability, into the tax net. In a perverse proposal it hauls in the lowest paid who were exempt up to now and lessens the levy burden of the highest paid. What perverse thinking could come up with that?

The Minister for Finance and his Government colleagues have introduced their last budget. However, uniquely in the history of this State they have sought to do something quite extraordinary in seeking to leave as their legacy the script for the next four budgets. They have sought to tie the State and its people into a binding fiscal straitjacket. No incoming government, they believe, can undo their work. While I accept that no incoming government can undo the scale of debt they have left as their legacy, a different Government can make different, better and fairer decisions on how that debt can be addressed.

Hitler, in his 1925 book Mein Kampf, coined the phrase "the big lie", a lie so colossal that no one could believe that somebody would have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. The big lie is now being peddled again by the Government. The big lie that will probably form the backdrop for our debate in coming weeks in the course of the general election is as follows: we as a nation somehow fell into a state of fiscal chaos; some gaping hole opened up and we stumbled into it; the Fianna Fáil and Green Party Government were mere onlookers to this disaster with no function in creating the hole in the first place; no alternative Government could have done any better; and no alternative future government will do better. It is a big lie that will not be swallowed by the people. The Government has taken them and their gullibility far enough and they now want rid of it.

The Taoiseach wishes to emphasise the differences between Labour and Fine Gael, and there are differences. They are the differences we will lay out in great detail to the people because we have different policy platforms and the people will be asked to make choices, as is their democratic right. If the parties, Labour and Fine Gael, have a majority in the next Dáil the proportion of policies will be determined by the proportion of Deputies elected, as is the people's right. It will not be convoluted or distorted in a big lie from that side of the House.

The Labour Party will set out its programme based on recovery, reform and renegotiation. We believe that the EU-IMF deal can be re-addressed and that there are fairer ways of making the awful decisions that need to be made. To borrow a much abused phrase, we can ensure we are genuinely in this together.

Our party's track record on reform is second to none. We believe that fundamental reform of public administration and how the country is governed is required, and we will set out our stall clearly and comprehensively for the people to judge. We have a view of a model for the country we can create with a health service that exists to serve the people and not to make profit, an education system whose reason for existence is to give every child and young adult the ability to reach his or her full potential and share the burden of building the nation, and a jobs strategy that values work and not speculation as the engine of growth. In truth the best thing the Government could do would be to step aside, let our beleaguered people make a choice for change and put competent people at the helm of our nation.

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