Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is absolutely the case that our first priority for the budget in a few weeks' time is to balance the books and to do so for the first time in ten years. Why is that important? I spoke to a student audience this morning in Merrion Square about why it is important. This country currently carries a debt of approximately €200 billion a year. Contrary to some of the narrative out there, that is not because of bank bailouts. About €30 billion of that is as a consequence of bailouts. The vast majority of it is a consequence of deficit spending. There has been a huge amount of deficit spending by Governments since the foundation of the State. Because of that deficit spending, it costs us approximately €6 billion a year to service our debt. If Governments throughout Irish history had balanced the books we would have an extra €5 billion or €6 billion a year to spend on health, housing, education and everything else. That is why I intend to ensure that the first budget that I bring through as Taoiseach - the first budget brought through by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe - is one that balances the books, so we do not saddle children of the future with additional debt and we do not require politicians of the future to have to choose between debt service costs and improvements in services. There will be additional funding for public services in the budget. As I mentioned already, public spending will increase next year by about 3.5%.

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