Derek McDowell (Labour)

In a sense, this is a "nothing" budget. There are no ideas in it – certainly no big ideas. More often than not, that is good cause to be thankful when dealing with the Minister's ideas because most of them have caused us grief over the years. However, on this particular occasion, there was a need for greater ambition and greater innovation than we have seen. The real budget happened two weeks ago in the Book of Estimates, which put the squeeze on public services and imposed a series of 16 social welfare cuts. That is what will cause pain and that is the story of the budget. What we have today is marking time in terms of social welfare and tax. It is a repetition of a number of ideas, most of which have been announced before.

The biggest of those ideas is the decentralisation plan which was first announced by the Minister in 1999 in the 2000 budget. He has repeated it almost every time he has had to answer parliamentary questions in the Lower House. He usually uses the same mantra, including notions such as relocating Department headquarters down the country and so on. I accept we did not get the detail we got today previously and, to that extent, it is new. However, there is little money –€20 million – to bring about the decentralisation and, as far as we can tell, there are no targets on how long it will take. I am extremely sceptical about whether this decentralisation will happen within the foreseeable future. The temptation is to think that it has a great deal more to do with the timing of the local elections than with anything else. Indeed, if anybody was in any doubt about that, the extraordinary performance of Senator Leyden earlier, when he dealt with the alleged impact on Roscommon, is proof of that point.

I am a Dubliner and there are few Dubliners in this House. Maybe we should take an attitude dictated by our local circumstances from time to time, although we Dubs rarely do so. This is a zero sum game. If 10,300 jobs are to be gained by various exotic places around the country, then they are being lost to our capital city. Our capital city is still the area in the country in which most unemployment is located. It is also where many people choose to live, including no doubt the Minister's officials in the Department of Finance, few of whom will be affected by this decision. Some people who live in and who were brought up in this city will not wish to be forcibly relocated to some place down the country to shore up the Fianna Fáil county council seat in Ballygobackwards.