Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

We concentrated on taxes over spending cuts. Deficit reduction is necessary. How it is done is at the discretion of the Government. Did any Minister even once argue at the Cabinet that this balance was wrong? Is the Minister telling us the Labour Party which last year advocated a third tax rate of 48% and adopting a 50:50 approach on taxes and spending cuts now believes a higher ratio of spending cuts to taxes offers the right formula, or is it just that the Labour Party's negotiating powers are so bad that it could not get Fine Gael to meet it even half way on any of these budgetary matters?

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