Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In the time available to me, I would like us to think about the process used to prepare and present this budget. My party colleagues will speak about the impact of it, which I did last week, but I would like us to think about the process used to prepare and present it, which was very clever. Myles McEntee, when covering the Fine Gael conference in Limerick for a Sunday newspaper, said the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, were like the Blackadder and Baldrick of Irish politics and that they had a clever plan. The clever plan was in the preparation and presentation of the budget.

The preparation was statements and leaks to scare people witless in the weeks coming up to the budget. As we got a little closer to the budget and, in particular, at the conference in Limerick, the talk was that it would not be so bad and that people would like what they saw in it. We then had the presentation on budget day which highlighted the very few positives and masked the negatives in the detail. That probably would have worked for the last Government because the Opposition did not perform as it should have done. However, on budget day, when the Ministers highlighted the positives and masked the negatives, we had good people who drilled down into the detail which exposed the full horror of this budget and the impact it would have on the people. The positive body language of the Ministers when they walked into the Chamber changed within two or three hours because they knew the cat was out of the bag in regard to the budget and that the public would understand very quickly the impact it would have on their day-to-day lives and the lives of their families.

The response to our analysis is certainly not to debate it but generally consists of saying Sinn Féin wants the Government and the country to fail. How ludicrous can one get to say Sinn Féin wants the Government and the country to fail? Why would anyone want to perpetuate the suffering the good people of this country are going through? Talk about inability to debate and cheap political posturing. When that does not work, the Government looks at what is happening in the Six Counties. It is a pity successive governments did not have the same concern for people in the Six Counties this Government professes to have now when it fears engaging in proper debate.

So much for intelligent debate.

This regressive Bill, like the budget that preceded it, will lead to further plundering of poor people and middle income earners. It will hurt children, families, the elderly, the ill and people with disabilities. It offers no vision and no hope. It contains no decency. Why were the salaries of people like us not reduced? Why were we not hit? Why are we not hurting as much as fathers, mothers and young jobseekers out there? This budget will not have the same impact on us as it will on unemployed people. We should be taking a greater hit than the unemployed. This Government will not touch us. In particular, the Government will not attempt to take any more money from the wealthy people of this nation. The previous Government's policies of cutting, slashing and deporting are being continued.

When I was at a public meeting in Carrick-on-Shannon a few months ago, I was asked a profound question by a person in the audience. Why and how have we come to a stage where the people of Ireland who elect the Government fear that Government rather than respect it? I think all of us should ask ourselves that question. The solution is in the answer. We need to get back to doing the decent thing and the right thing. In its pre-budget submission, Sinn Féin-----

See this speech in context