Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy must be the only the person in the country who is expressing surprise at these figures this morning. Everyone knows we have lost almost a decade because of the policies pursued by the previous Government. We know the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. The banks actually became bankrupt and they had to be bailed out. We could not continue the way we were. If it were not for our colleagues in Europe, the whole country would actually have gone bankrupt. It was because of the money provided by Europe and the International Monetary Fund that the adjustment period could be spread over time to make it sustainable. It is somewhat amazing for the Deputy to express surprise this morning that these impositions were made historically, when they have been the bread and butter of political discourse for the past eight years. He never ceases to amaze me with what he comes up with.

What will I do to reverse them? As I announced and implemented in the last budget, we will not increase any taxes or cut expenditure further. We are slowly unwinding the more penal of the provisions. The pension levy, to which the Deputy pointed in his question, was finished last year, and it was announced that the small residual amount to be collected in 2015 would not be renewed in 2016. We started unwinding income tax and USC receipts last year and are committed to continuing that in the next budget.

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