Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This Government does not accept that somebody should be asked to live on less than €188 per week.

However, the Deputy's party is content to have people living on €87 a week. That is to have brass neck. The budget is a difficult one because it aims to restore the country's finances and get us out of the economic mess we inherited. It protects basic rates of social welfare and children in the classroom - there are no cuts to basic education services. It protects health services and introduces the biggest package of taxes on wealth ever been seen in a budget, certainly in my time in the House, which will raise more than €500 million. The approach the Government is taking to what is a difficult budget is to protect those on low and middle incomes and ask those with the broadest shoulders to bear the most.

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