Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

The Minister of State claims that the budget is designed to stabilise public finances. It may be designed to do that but it does not do so. We will borrow an extra €2 billion next year in order to subsidise current spending. Looking back, that is the situation we were in when the man with whom the Minister of State worked, Charlie Haughey, brought the country to near penury in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

I find some elements of the Minister of State's speech to be quite cynical. We talk about "automatic stabilisers", a phrase that has a meaning in economic terms. It was suggested that social welfare increases act as automatic stabilisers. However, due to the spending spree over the past eleven years there is no facility for automatic stabilisers and counter cyclical measures because the money has been spent. We have now borrowed so much that we will double the national debt in a very short time and will return to the types of figures we saw in the 1980s.

We are being very self-congratulatory now as we were earlier today. The fact is that the Government gave free medical cards to those aged over 70 and then expects a clap on the back when these are taken away. It created quangos and when some of them are amalgamated members of Government congratulate one another. The Government gave tax reductions and then imposes on gross income across the board an income levy and income taxes. It takes a brass neck to have made some of the speeches today congratulating the Government and claiming credit for correcting the problems that it created over the past 11 years.