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

The Deputy raises a number of questions. First, she talked about how we were continuing to cut public expenditure. We are not. In the last budget, the Government increased public expenditure. The spring statement states that we will continue to increase public expenditure between now and 2020. We have spelled it out in precise terms for 2016. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, will spend another €750 million on top of what he spent in 2015 on enhancing public services. From 2016 to 2020, the figures provided in the spring statement have built in the extra expenditure, which runs from demographic changes. In other words, the extra teachers, nursing home beds and so on that will be needed because of demographic changes are built into the figures. On top of that, we think we will have space slightly in advance of the precise space identified for the 2016 budget in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. There is no suggestion that we will do anything other than target the incomes of low-paid and middle income people to give them extra relief. There are three personal taxes: USC, income tax and PRSI. Different reliefs affect different cohorts of people. As the Taoiseach announced in this House, we intend to reduce the burden of the universal social charge on taxpayers.

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