Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is no time as good as the present for gauging public opinion. I have been canvassing and knocking on people's doors and meeting them in their places of work. The one thing that is coming back - I am sure the Minister will be very interested in this, and I presume he is hearing it himself - is that people can pick good and bad out of the budget but the one thing that an awful lot of people are saying about the budget is there was nothing in the budget for working people, for people who are getting up in the morning, paying a mortgage, trying to rear a family and go to work. They find there was very little in the budget for them. When we talk about the universal social charge, we have to remember that the main political parties have something in common and that is both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have consistently said they would abolish it. They did not do so. They played with it you, messed with it but they did not abolish it. It was a temporary tax but unfortunately, like lots of things that are temporary, it does not take long for it to become permanent.

People are taxed to death. They have been taxed further with the carbon tax which I will remind people was supported by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin objected to it afterwards but supported it at the beginning. I will never forget what was said at the time-----

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