Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

I am sure they are given that every Minister looks after his own patch but what will happen elsewhere? All the Minister for Finance said he would do is produce a few reports and see what will happen. Perhaps he will examine the issue again in 2011 but who knows? The Government does not have a clue what it is doing.

The scale of borrowing is frightening and this has not hit home with people yet. It is an admission that, in a short period, the Government has blown a sound economy with public expenditure going awry. The Minister for Finance stated he is taxing everybody because he needs to restore order and stability to the public finances. Senator MacSharry will ask what Fine Gael would do about it. Sadly, as our economy goes up in flames, he is one of the boys in charge. We have announced what we would do and he can look that up. However, Fianna Fáil and its partners are in charge and its members must resolve the problem.

The cutbacks in funding to local authorities will put services such as firefighting at risk. The reduction in local authority budgets is massive and, at local level, this will create even more problems because, without the transformation we expected to happen in the public service over the past few years, local authorities have only one way to address the shortfall, which is to increase the rates and charges they apply for services. That will put more pressure on small businesses. That is the reason the Government was expected to introduce reform and make hard decisions yesterday. It blew the opportunity and it cannot admit that.

The Government parties are too cosy and nothing in yesterday's budget would give any Opposition Member even the coldest of comfort that they will sort out the economic problems we face over the next number of years. There are issues with the public finances and a number of officials have tried to make great strides to address them but when the Minister stated he would not give in to vested interests, he meant he would not take them on. He will do nothing to introduce the change required. He will make ordinary people who have been fooled by the Government parties over the past few years pay for their mistakes.

If one lives a clean life, one will get away with many taxes but many people like a drink, a cigarette, with which I do not agree, a bet and to travel. The Government's policy is to get them every which way they turn. I am disappointed by the way the Government parties handled the budget. They have no shame about taking us back to where we were in the 1980s or before the Celtic tiger. They have no problems boasting about ratcheting up public debt to 43% of GDP in a short time. They said they do not want to destabilise the economy and that is why they are borrowing so much money. While there may be a need for the borrowing, there is a greater need to make sure the money is spent properly. There is no indication that the message has gotten through to Government politicians. I am worried, therefore, that they will also fail to make the hard decisions needed to address the banking crisis.