Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach is becoming more like Donald Trump every day, being detached from reality.

I want to make a few very clear points. The document the Taoiseach is holding up, Building an Equal Society: Labour's Alternative Budget 2020, which I am very glad he has read, is built on the figures presented by the Department of Finance. Unless the Taoiseach is suggesting they are completely false, they are all we can budget on. The figures were all proofed by the Department of Finance. They project a surplus next year of 0.2% of GDP, or €700 million, having provided €5 per week to every pensioner or anybody in receipt of a social welfare payment, including the disability benefit or carer's benefit. What it does do is ask the banks to pay their fair share. It is amazing that the Taoiseach believes asking the banks to pay their share in the normal times of funding the State will bring about an economic collapse and that it represents ruinous policy. It is that ruinous attitude to banks that brought us to disaster in the first place.

I question the notion that this was a Brexit budget because it ignores the most vulnerable. They are required to get no increase and meet the cost of additional price rises. Is that the Taoiseach's idea of a Brexit budget?

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