Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am asking these questions because the initial question asked about the Taoiseach's plans to introduce legislation to deal with the issue of Cabinet confidentiality.

I asked that question because the programme for Government contains that commitment. Cad a tharla leis? What happened to that commitment? If it is not appropriate - the Taoiseach read an extract from the Constitution - why was it in the programme for Government in the first instance?

All Sinn Féin proposals for an alternative budget were sent to the Department of Finance, which costed all of them bar one. The only one it did not cost was the wealth tax - it refused to cost the wealth tax. We offered the wealth tax as an alternative to the family home tax, which the Government is rushing through this Chamber.

There is one big thing to which I have been unable to get an answer. I do not believe the Taoiseach can dodge behind the issue of Cabinet confidentially on this one because it considered taking away the respite care grant, cutting child benefit, making maternity benefit taxable and so on. Was the budget equality-proofed? When the four just men sat in their little Cabinet sub-committee meeting and took all these decisions, and it was brought to the Cabinet, did some of the Ministers not ask whether it had been equality-proofed? Somebody is bound to know. Was the budget equality proofed? The Taoiseach knows the litany of people who are burdened by what his Government is doing. Were these most vulnerable people, who are affected by these scathing cuts, part of the deliberations and was the budget equality-proofed?

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