Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

I wish to refer to one matter which featured last week in the discussion on the budget but which was lost in all the various figures and discussions on expenditure, namely, the very basis of our national finances. After ten years of the Celtic tiger we should not have a national debt. What has featured in the Budget Statement by the Minister is that we have a return to borrowing and an increase in our absolute debt and an increase in percentage terms. We all remember the 1990s when we tried to qualify for the European Monetary Union by reducing our debt and keeping down the rate of inflation. They were difficult times economically and politically but the debt was consistently reduced until this year. As set out in the Budget Statement, we are now into a period of budgetary deficits and increased borrowing. This is due to a lack of budgetary discipline and a lack of fiscal control on expenditure, which was a feature of the Fine Gael-Labour Government in the 1990s when we recorded the first budget surplus in the history of the State.