James Bannon (Fine Gael)

The people are watching their hard-earned money and the Government is accountable to them. We will be keeping an eye on it over the next two years of this Government's term of office; I do not believe it will last even two years.

A false loosening of the purse strings will fool no one. The apparent pre-budget increases of €2.5 billion shrink dramatically to €1.5 billion when automatic pay rises for public servants are deducted, a figure hardly likely to make much difference to public services. The Government has cut funding to local authorities yet again. It has opened the floodgates to higher local charges and this will be evident over the next couple of months. When councils strike the rates there will be higher business rates and a worrying deterioration in local public services. Once again we will see crippling, unfair stealth taxes in higher charges to householders and higher charges for local businesses. As always these charges will hit the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society. However, as is manifestly obvious, this Government simply does not care.

The increase in the permitted local authority expenditure is a meagre 1% but the local authority pay bill would necessitate an increase of approximately 3%. The allocation will not even cover inflation. With 11,393 applications for disabled person's grants received in July this year, some €60.94 million would be needed if 10,000 were to receive the grant at the same average cost as last year, yet the Minister allocated a mere €52 million in the Estimates. Likewise, funding for the task force on special housing aid for the elderly is hardly enough to cover inflation. The allocation of €348,000 will only cover 116 grants for the installation of central heating for the elderly, at a cost of approximately €3,000 per house. The outcome is as always that the least able must bear the brunt of the Government's ineptitude.

Despite Government hype, there is no funding in the budget for the promised 2,000 extra gardaí.