Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

I am conscious that people watching this debate at home will have listened to the Minister's words and that many of them will be as disappointed as am I with what they have heard. At the outset, I note that although this budget is a dismal affair, in the past, the people passed their verdict on the last Government that pursued the same strategy as the current Administration. I remind the Government and its Ministers that they are accountable to the people. The kind of high-handed tactics the Government has adopted in the course of this budgetary process, including highly cynical leaking, has not gone unnoticed.

Last night, the Taoiseach told struggling families and working people they were not responsible for the crisis. Today, however, the Minister has delivered a budget targeting those very same people yet again and is making them carry the can for a crisis not of their making. This is the fifth austerity budget inflicted on our people. It is the fifth round of cutbacks and the fifth assault on the livelihoods of low and middle income families. It is the fifth disgraceful episode in which our older people, our young people, our carers and people with disabilities take the pain for the greed, incompetence and corruption of the ruling classes.

Previous cutback budgets were introduced by Fianna Fáil. Do the Government parties remember the rage they expressed when that party hacked away at citizens' lives? Do they remember when the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party railed against austerity and its devastating consequences? That was then. The budget today is totally at one with that of the last failed Government. Nothing the Minister has said today has not been said by its members. The Government promised something different and promised change. However, today's budget consigns all of its promises to the dustbin of two-faced, sleveen politics.

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