Arthur Spring (Kerry North-West Limerick, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I would like to point out a couple of key figures that influenced the way the budget was put together. Every journalist and every house in this country should know that the adjustment was €2.5 billion not €3.1 billion, as per the first request of the troika. We should also look back further to when Fianna Fáil agreed a memorandum of understanding with the troika, signed by the late Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen in which the adjustment for this year would be another €1 billion more, due to a promissory note which was over-onerous and because the interest rate on the moneys provided by the European Central Bank was high. This has been re-negotiated to the tune of €620 million. These figures were provided by the Department of Finance.

In reality the adjustment would be €4.1 billion or more if Fianna Fáil, the Independents and the Greens were in government today. The memorandum of understanding states that for 2014 the budget for the Department of Social Protection should be €18.6 billion, that is €1.7 billion more than is being taken out here. We will spend €20.3 billion looking after 2.2 million people who receive social protection payments, from old age benefit to child benefit and everything that exists between. It is a bit rich for people to come in here and apologise for bankrupting the country, for having left us at junk bond status and in a position where the IMF, an organisation that is typically brought into sub-Saharan countries to save it their people from going bankrupt, had to come in. This embarrassment was not brought upon us by this Government but it will be removed by this Government.

Those black and white figures do not lie. There is €1.7 billion less being taken out of the Department of Social Protection than would have been taken out under the memorandum of understanding signed by the Greens, Independents and Fianna Fáil. I would like Fianna Fáil Members to tell us where would they have made that €1.7 billion extra in cuts? They should be honest with us and let us know what they would have done to people.

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