Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It must be truly galling for public servants to see the outrageous pay and pensions still afforded to a tiny minority funded by the public purse. It must be infuriating for the average public sector worker to have his or her terms and conditions of employment lumped in with a discussion of payments to current and former Taoisigh, secretaries general and Government special advisers. Enda Kenny, Eamon Gilmore, Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin, the band of boys dedicated to cutting all round them, are all overpaid. However, in their scramble to find savings, they seem to have overlooked this simple reality. I encourage them to look at the international comparisons and I assure them that when they do, they will not be able to justify the salaries they are receiving. Today's budget should have reflected that and cuts should have been made accordingly.

The so-called stimulus plan, the €500 million of pro-business measures announced today, is little short of laughable. The key ingredient for economic recovery is investment and we are all fully aware of that. On numerous occasions we in Sinn Féin have set out plans and funding streams for the necessary scale of investment needed to impact on jobs recovery but the Government has given us the deaf ear. It does not want to know. I believe the Government's single biggest failure - it has many - is the failure to invest at the required level for jobs. It is the single biggest failure. Half-baked schemes to massage the figures on the live register will not cut it. We need investment of scale. This Government has spent the past three years dithering and foostering about jobs and stimulus, talking a lot about it but failing abjectly to deliver any of it.

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