Results 25,041-25,060 of 36,764 for speaker:Enda Kenny

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: Anybody listening to that speech who was not acquainted with the true facts of what is happening in our country would assume we had a balance of payments in surplus, full employment and that we were leaders on a world scale. The Taoiseach has not been straight with the people. He started off this morning by saying it is important to be straight with people. The Taoiseach was not straight in...

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: They were costed by the Department of Finance and not a single journalist or economist has cast any aspersions on those-----

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: -----but what the Taoiseach did not admit was that there was a fairer way of dealing with achievement of the targets we have accepted in the national interest. The massive income taxes on low and middle income families in the budget are expected to raise €830 million for the Taoiseach's Government next year.

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: The cuts to payments for the disabled, the blind, the carers and widows are saving a further €90 million. We pointed out that those savings, and more, could have been achieved by different methods including an additional €260 million in public service payroll savings, including bigger cuts at the top, and a more ambitious rationalisation programme than this Government is intending to...

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: It refers to 300,000 jobs but there are 429,000 on the live register.

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: The Taoiseach says his plan will generate these jobs but there are no backups-----

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: -----to any of those figures. The Taoiseach is not being straight in that regard.. For instance-----

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: -----as was pointed out yesterday by Deputy Noonan, many of the figures contained in this budget document are not backed up by any policy decisions. Page B.15, on activation measures, states that a reduced live register from a more intensive labour activation strategy will yield €100 million. Where is that? On administrative efficiencies, it states that there will be a reduction in...

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: In the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, €6.2 million will be saved on the Vote in respect of TG4. The administrative efficiencies in the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs amount to €10 million. There is €380 million from the Department of Health and Children in demand-led schemes savings - is that generic drugs? - and other procurement...

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: On regional airports, for the Tánaiste, it states that curtailment of support for regional air services from mid-2011 will yield €5 million. That directly affects Donegal, Sligo, Knock, Galway and Kerry. The Tánaiste might explain that when she speaks. (Interruptions).

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: Yesterday was the Minister for Finance's fourth budget in two years. It is my sincere hope that it will be the Taoiseach's party's last budget for many years to come for the party opposite has shown that it is incapable of learning from its mistakes. This budget, like the Minister's previous efforts, is devoid of hope, ideas and imagination. It is a budget devised by bean counters to meet...

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: -----and a stake through the quality of life of so many-----

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: ------hundreds of thousands of low and middle-income families.

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: It is the Government who has taken the cut in income from widows, the blind, those with a disability and carers.

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: The Taoiseach may cast them aside. He may think it is funny. It is not.

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: The Government has chosen the easy way out again. It chose to target the vulnerable rather than risk upsetting the powerful vested interests by introducing radical reform. This budget is incredibly harsh on low and middle-income families. Under the Government's proposal a family with one earner and three children earning €40,000 a year will see its annual income fall by almost €1,700....

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: Our four year plan was costed by the Department of Finance.

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: Where is the fairness in targeting hard-working families who may be burdened with negative equity and who have rising utility bills and the prospect of even more expensive mortgages? Ireland also desperately needed a budget with a clear and credible plan to grow the economy and give our young people some hope for the future. What we got instead was a budget that contains no strategy for...

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: It has run out of ideas and it is run out of time. It has locked itself away in a bunker of its own making, afraid of change and suspicious of any new thinking that comes from the outside.

Financial Resolution No. 34: General (Resumed) (8 Dec 2010)

Enda Kenny: The best and final service that the Taoiseach and his Minister could render now is to allow the people to give a new Government a fresh and clear mandate, which issue now rests entirely with the Green Party which is absent from the House.