Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This spring statement is a classic example of a Government over-promising and under-delivering. Built up as some kind of mini-budget, it has ended up as just another PR exercise from a Government that is quickly running out of road. At the end of all this, people who have been hearing about the spring statement for months will be left scratching their heads wondering what it was all about. I cannot find a single element in today's statement that will bring any short-term benefits to families.

As an alternative the Ministers could have said in today's spring statement that the bank veto would end immediately; that they would not tolerate the excessively high standard variable rates banks are charging; that any family making a reasonable and honest effort to pay their mortgage would not be kicked out of their home by the bank; that the almost 1,000 children living in emergency accommodation in our capital city today would immediately be given reasonable and permanent accommodation; and that in light of the improving economic situation the Government would introduce emergency legislation into the House tonight to restore the €325 cut to respite care grant so that come June when the payments for 2015 are made the full payment to carers would be reinstated.

Instead we got none of that. We got an exercise in self-congratulation, a self-serving statement from both Ministers clapping each other on the back.

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