Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)

The Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan's, budget announced yesterday was a stealth tax budget. Of the €1 billion he raised, the massive bulk of it came from stealth charges – the VAT increase, the household charge, carbon tax, motor tax and excise duties. It was an anti-jobs budget. It is a pro-landlord and pro-property speculators budget.

The Government has protected property reliefs and allowed capital gains exemptions for people who buy commercial property and do not sell for seven years. This will encourage speculation if people do not have to pay capital gains tax on the profit of a property they sell. It protected the remaining section 23 reliefs rather than abolishing them, as the Labour Party had proposed. It will not go after the upward only rent reviews. Ní fhoghlaimíonn sibh aon rud.It is happy to forego tax coming into the Exchequer by amending these tax measures and to compensate for this, it cut child benefit, disability allowance and closed community nursing homes. Mo náire sibh.

The universal social charge is another unfair tax. Sinn Féin opposed it from the outset. The budget lifted those earning up to €10,000 out of the universal social charge but left all those earning up to the minimum wage still in it. Sinn Féin would have abolished this unfair charge. The Government kept one promise. It did not go after the high income earners. Tax rates and bands remain unchanged and those on high incomes are protected.

We know that indirect taxes hit the poorest hardest. That is a fact and the Taoiseach knows it. The decision to cut the fuel allowance by €120 is scandalous. This cut will hit older people and those with disabilities worst. This decision follows cuts of up to 25% to the fuel allowance and the household benefits package imposed by the Government in September and it comes at a time when fuel prices are increasing sharply. We know that 2,000 people, mostly elderly, die here every winter as a result of cold related illnesses.

The savage cut of €543 million in the health budget for 2012 will devastate the health services. When added to the existing HSE deficit the real level of cuts for 2012 will be over €850 million. Hospitals and other services across the State are under enormous pressure and these further attacks will only deepen the crisis.

The Government trumpets allocating €35 million to mental health services with one hand and then with the other strips €50 million from disability, mental health and children's services, each of which are worthy causes. Mental health is the Cinderella of our health service. Will we develop a proper strategy for suicide prevention or self-harm when the Government is taking so much money out of those services?

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