Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to the Minister of State for stopping him in such a flow. Everything he says is correct.

I am pleased to have a chance to speak for four minutes on budget 2014. The three main objectives of this budget are: to continue to correct the public finances, to continue to create more jobs, and to support hard-working families on average incomes which have given the most since this crisis began.

I cannot help but wonder when I hear of Members who were previously in these benches talking about being outraged at some of the corrections that have taken place. It gives us no pleasure to have to take decisions to take €2.5 billion out of a yearly budget. That is not easy to do, but almost everyone in this House agreed that the €2.5 billion correction had to be made. All of a sudden, we see the outrage, the mock anger and statements coming from the benches opposite.

They have short memories. They state that this is troika-based, that it all came from Lehman Brothers. When these parties, particularly Fianna Fáil, sat on these benches ably supported by some of the Deputies in this House from 1997 until 2007, we lost €7.3 billion because of Government mismanagement, waste, cost overruns and they simply not being at the helm when they should have been. That equates, to put it in simple terms, to €10 million per annum per Fianna Fáil Deputy and his or her supporters for that ten-year period. We are living with those decisions today and that is the reason we must come in and make these cuts. If they do not believe what I am saying, these matters all are highlighted in the Comptroller and Auditor General reports since then, and no action taken. I would be quiet about the mock outrage from the benches opposite.

We are getting there slowly.

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