Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I thank Members for their comments. To be fair the Minister for Finance and Tánaiste speaks for 45 minutes or so and does not cover every aspect of every cent spent. The Ministers will tomorrow make statements about the nitty gritty and much has already been discussed. At the various Estimates meetings, Ministers must outline what they will achieve for the year and they will be answerable at the end of the year for this.

Things have changed and everything is not covered in the Budget Statement. We should put what is said in the Budget Statement with the various Estimates meetings to see what has happened.

To be fair, the general comment over the past few weeks have described the problems the Minister for Finance was facing and how he could deal with various issues. In the media there was a reasonable understanding of the challenges ahead of us this year. Some of the speakers, particularly from the Fine Gael side, do not seem to understand this and prefer to state that it is all down to Government waste and other nonsense. They do not appear to have ever heard of financial turbulence in the markets, the sub-prime crisis, the rising price of oil and problems in the US and UK economies and the dollar.

The budget must take account of local issues.