Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

At long last workers who have sacrificed so much in recent years should have slightly more money in their pockets at the end of each week. This is a step in the right direction and I, for one, am happy to welcome it. However, what is completely absent from the budget is any new vision for sustainable economic growth. In fact, the economic plan for Ireland appears to be to simply mimic the precise formula used by Fianna Fáil in the early 2000s. This development is extremely regrettable. The plan is to boost revenue for developers and push up property prices, ignore the domestic economy and hope we will continue to attract inward investment in the face of huge scrutiny from abroad of our tax arrangements.

The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, quoted from Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken". The reality is, however, that the Minister has actually chosen to follow the beaten path, which is regrettable. Last week the Irish Independentannounced that this would be a budget for builders. It is nothing more than a dig-out for them. The abolition of the 80% windfall tax on rezoning is the result of months of lobbying on the part of the Construction Industry Federation. This is one of the powerful lobby groups which had an enormous impact on Government policy when Fianna Fáil was in power. We have also become aware that the Taoiseach has attended private dinners for bankers and developers held at locations not too far from this House. The original purpose of the windfall tax was to prevent a recurrence of happened in the boom times, when councillors were lobbied to rezone agricultural land for commercial or residential development or rezone residential land for commercial development. Once rezoning had occurred, the land would be flipped over for a huge profit. In essence, councillors' votes could make landowners millionaires overnight. It seems that the Government is happy to ramp up this behaviour once more, without any spatial strategy or national development plan - in fact, in the absence of any plan at all.

There is no doubt that houses must be built. However, this must not happen in a haphazard, frenzied fashion, whereby developers and bankers will once again circle the wagons and place politicians under pressure. It is no surprise that both NAMA and the banks favour a return to mass rezoning because this could generate huge returns for both of them. Similarly, in many instances, it would result in a large bailout for some of the very developers responsible for the dysfunction in the market. Until that issue is resolved and a clear spatial strategy put in place, returning to the bad old days of windfall profits from rezoning will be a recipe for economic disaster. It is extraordinary that there has been so little focus on this matter in the media in the past 24 hours. The Government is laying the foundations for another boom-bust cycle for the future. This is precisely the economic vicious circle from which the independent Irish Fiscal Advisory Council is trying to protect us. Obviously, that body's advice has fallen on deaf ears.

The budget is anti-business and anti the self-employed. In a radio interview broadcast this morning the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, blamed a hike in the level of PRSI paid by public sector workers, introduced by the previous Fianna Fáil Administration in 2010, for the unfair targeting of self-employed persons in the context of the rate of the universal social charge, USC, which applies to them. The Government had ample opportunity to address this issue in recent years and there was certainly no onus on it to increase the rate of USC for self-employed persons by 1%, as happened yesterday. It is worth noting that the rate of USC which applies to the people concerned is almost the same as the headline rate of corporate tax. In reality, it is the same as the effective rate of that tax. To tax individual self-employed persons on top of the income tax they pay at a rate of 11%, the same as the effective rate of corporate tax, is grotesque. Again, this matter appears to have been largely ignored by the media.

It is difficult to believe the Government values business people and employers when they are continually singled out for the harshest treatment under the tax code. What is being done in this regard is short-sighted, as is the failure to address the issue of capital gains tax as it relates to business investment. There are zero incentives available for wealthy people, angel investors, etc., who want to find ways to gain a return on their wealth by investing in it business. Every tax incentive and loophole is available if one wants to invest one's money in commercial or residential property. If, however, one wishes to invest in innovation or entrepreneurialism, there are virtually no incentives of which one can avail. This really proves the point that the Government has not shown any real commitment to small and medium-sized businesses in the indigenous sector. Again, this Administration is more interested in supporting influential banks and big developers. Sadly, this is the same formula which was used by Fianna Fáil and which, in the first instance, got us into the mess from which we are trying to extricate ourselves. We are not on the road less travelled; we are on precisely the same road on which we travelled previously and with disastrous consequences.

The Ireland emerging from the EU-IMF bailout is the same one that was engulfed by the economic crisis which erupted six years ago. We have learned very little; we are less well off; incomes have been decimated and hundreds of thousands of young people have been forced to emigrate. Have we actually learned anything at all? We have not changed the culture in Ireland, nor have we changed, in fundamental terms, the way we engage with the planning, policy-making or decision-making processes. We have not reformed politics or developed a new economic or social vision for the country. We remain excessively reliant on foreign direct investment, property bubbles and boom-bust cycles.

We have not addressed the failings in our political system. Unfortunately, it is beginning to look more like business as usual. It is very difficult now to distinguish the path or the vision - if one could call it that - of this Government from that of Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fáil-led coalitions.

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