Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

This Government has been elected to clean up the biggest economic mess ever created in this country's history. That mess was created by the previous Administration and no amount of fine words from the opposite side of the House will change that fact. The issues being discussed are serious because they impact upon people's lives. We know the impact the issues will have. They are the latest in a series of measures which the Irish people have had to endure since this crisis began. The decisions taken last week were not easy to take and nobody knows that better than myself. The choices to be made were not between these cuts and no cuts; they were between the cuts we decided upon and other cuts.

On the announcement of the Estimates, Deputy Fleming indicated that his party accepted the scale and composition of the Government's fiscal correction and so it should because anything else would be rank hypocrisy. Therefore, Fianna Fáil should spell out exactly where it would have sought to make cuts.

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