Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

He said the problem is that far too many people who should be receiving primary care come to hospitals — the point can be made that primary care has not yet been developed in the way it should have been — and that, at the other end of the system, there are insufficient step-down facilities. A new health administration system is being introduced this year and it is hoped that this will give rise to more efficiencies.

In the area of education, the intake in primary schools is rising quite sharply. On capital investment, while there were problems with escalating costs, many commentators have conceded that the improvements introduced are making a real impact with all the different roads opened, the Luas and so on. People see a difference.

I will deal briefly with three points made by Senator Phelan. I believe he took a leaf out of Deputy Richard Bruton's book in talking about the increase in the tax take. However, this whole approach is fallacious. If incomes are rising sharply, the absolute amount of tax will rise also. Is Fine Gael suggesting that this should not be so? Therefore, people at work, if they are much better off, are paying a higher absolute amount of tax than they were seven or eight years ago. I see nothing wrong with that; public services have to be funded.

There have been constant references to reckless spending since 2001. There was a Government surplus of €4.5 billion. The point has often been made by former Deputy McCreevy as to whether that surplus should have been €6 billion or €7 billion. It is difficult to defend accumulating vast quantities of money and not spending it where it was needed. It might be argued that the action taken in 2003 and 2004 to ensure that confidence was maintained was something of an overreaction. I do not know, but investor confidence was consolidated and we are back at a 5% growth rate, which I believe is very satisfactory.