Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I do not want to pretend for a minute that the adjustments the Government is required to take are anything we would want to do or anything that can be done in a painless way. There is already an extraordinary degree of pain being endured by the people of Ireland, top to bottom. We want to make the adjustments we have to make to get to the fiscal target of a 3% deficit by 2015 in the orderly way we have set out. There are those who have argued that we should do this in one big bang, regardless of the social consequences. We have negotiated with the funding troika to do this in an orderly way, not a painless way. This means that in order to get to the stage post of an 8.6% deficit next year, we need to make adjustments of €3.8 billion.

The Deputy spoke about the balance between taxation and expenditure cuts. My own party campaigned during the general election on the basis of a 50:50 ratio. Fine Gael campaigned on the basis of a 75:25 ratio. The balance in the medium-term fiscal statement will be in the order of a 60:40 ratio. It is not that people love taxes, but we are very conscious of the impact of cuts on the living standards of ordinary people and on sucking money out of the economy, in terms of allowing a growth strategy as part of our economic strategy. There cannot be just cuts and taxation. There must also be a growth and jobs element and we are trying to preserve that. These are difficult balances to strike.

We will try to do this as fairly as possible. We are worried about the impact across different sectors. An impact on education might impact on the same family or individuals in social welfare or transport. We are trying to get a cross-departmental impact assessment to see minimise the impact on the most vulnerable.

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