Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)

It is interesting to hear Deputy Ó Cuív talk about going home content for Christmas. Given what went on, how often did he go home content for Christmas in the past ten years?

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. It is always difficult for a Government Deputy to defend cuts in a budget, but we are living in extraordinary times after years of disastrous decisions made by the previous Government. I accept this was a tough budget. We would all have preferred not to have to make such decisions, but the reality is that we have no choice. We inherited an €18 billion euro deficit which we have to fill. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, said on Tuesday:

The people of Ireland have paid a high price for this mismanagement of the economy. Personal wealth has been destroyed, thousands of people are sinking into poverty, emigration has returned and unemployment is far too high.

The Government has made a very good start. As Chairman of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, I know from speaking to colleagues in other countries that we have restored our reputation abroad. People are no longer talking about this country in negative terms. They are speaking about how we have restored credibility to the country in the short time we have been in government. Even the international press speak about us in a favourable manner, unlike the way we were portrayed in the past two years.

Abraham Lincoln said, "You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." We have a responsibility to the country to make the hard decisions now in order that we can bring it back from the brink. We want to do this in a fair way. We also want to be open and transparent with the people, as has been the case in the past six months since we came to power. Given the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves, the budget has been fair. To close the €18 billion gap, we had to make choices. There was no easy way out. The Government's priority was to protect the most vulnerable, create jobs, streamline the public service and, most of all, protect people's pay packets. We must regain control of our fiscal and economic policies in order that the economy can grow again. That is the reason, even in these most difficult of circumstances, it is welcome that we have managed to deliver on the programme for Government commitments to maintain core social welfare rates, the current rates of income tax, introduce schemes such as the partial credit guarantee scheme and provide for the construction of a €100 million micro-finance start-up fund for small businesses. It has gone over many people's heads that the Government has reversed the decision by the previous Administration to reduce the minimum wage. In the budget we have eased the burden further on lower income workers by ensuring 330,000 people earning less than €10,000 will no longer have to pay the universal social charge. This has been welcomed by many low income families, trade unions and the farming organisations.

In spite of the difficult choices to be made, I remind Deputies on the Opposition benches that the previous Government proposed to slash the social protection budget by an additional €665 million next year. The Government has managed to limit the adjustment to €475 million. Perhaps some Opposition Members might explain to the House who was to pay the price for the additional cuts of €190 million proposed in Fianna Fáil's four year plan.

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