Seanad debates

Thursday, 12 December 2002

Appropriation Bill, 2002 [Certified Money Bill]: Second and Subsequent Stages.

 

Derek McDowell (Labour)

While I am reluctant to get involved in an argument with Senator Mansergh, I suppose I should. The bottom line is that the Government has not been so much responsible for financial mismanagement as cynical financial manipulation of public expenditure. What we got during the previous five years was an unreasonable constraint on spending because of the 4% target to which others referred. We should have been investing more in the circumstances. This was followed in the last two years by a splurge in spending which was entirely motivated by the point we were at in the electoral cycle. It was entirely motivated by the Government's need to spend more money so as to be re-elected. That has now been followed, in turn, by the grossest deception of all – a complete betrayal of what the Government seemed to indicate to the people during those days in May when it was re-elected.

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