Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Not particularly, because I always seem to have to repeat everything I say to the Senator and then repeat it again. What the Government was faced with was taking money out of expenditure and the three areas of expenditure are social welfare, public pay and services. It was not enough just to try to increase revenue. That is part of it, and that is what we did in the previous budget. The income levies, which people viewed in a progressive manner, have had that effect. The more one tries to hit at the income of people, the more one gets into diminishing returns. A total of 4% of people will pay approximately 50% of income tax next year. We doubled the health levy to find that €105 million less has been realised. There is no way one can achieve €4 billion of savings by heading after a small group of people because it would not give the required results. That is why we were faced with trying to take money out of expenditure. As in any small or large budget, if one does not have money coming in, one cannot have it going out. One has to bridge that gap. That is precisely what we are trying to achieve. We are trying to reduce the €400 million per week that we are borrowing. That is in the best interests of the entire country. It is in the best interests of young people that we try to return to a situation where employment is available and there are incentives for people to invest in this country and to ensure we can hold on to the 1.9 million jobs we have. It would be very easy for us just to focus on those people who have lost their jobs. They have to be the focus of this Department in particular and they have to be supported but there are still 1.9 million people working and they need to be supported as well. That is the type of balancing we had to do in the budget. It is difficult. This is not a situation we want to be in but it is for the greater good of the country.