John Gilroy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will come to that and I am glad that the Senator is giving me the opportunity to deal with it. This morning it was stated here and outside the House that any money raised in the budget would go towards payment of the promissory notes, but that is incorrect. It is wrong and demonstrates either a misunderstanding or a deliberate attempt to portray something as what it is not. If there was no promissory note to be paid, this budget would still be required and ¤3.5 billion would still have to be taken out of the economy.

I wish to deal with the details of the budget, but I do not think the Cathaoirleach will indulge me as much as he indulged Senator Marc MacSharry. The change in the PRSI system means that people will pay an extra ¤5 a week. While no one likes to see a decrease in entitlements, a fiver a week is not excessive. The measure will bring in about ¤800 million in a full year and make a significant contribution to the Government's attempts to spread the pain across the entire economy. I acknowledge the reduction of ¤10 per month in child benefit and, as Senator Marc MacSharry pointed out to me, my party stated before the general election that it would protect child benefit. We attempted to do so but found it impossible. However, we have offset this by an initiative to provide 6,000 after-school child care places for children in primary school, as well as an additional investment in the school meals programme. I could say a lot about the property tax but an interesting point is that anybody who lives in a house worth ¤100,000 or less will be ¤10 per year better off under the new property tax regime than he or she was under the previous household charge regime. That is a decent enough move. Somebody living in a house worth ¤200,000, around the average for those on middle incomes, will pay ¤306 per year. That is a long way from the forecasts of ¤400, ¤500 and ¤600 from the Opposition benches in recent weeks. Perhaps they might now have the good grace to admit that they got it wrong.

On education, we have managed to protect the pupil-teacher ratio in public schools. I spoke to some teachers at a meeting last night who expressed huge concern about this issue and, to be honest, they were very sceptical about our ability to maintain that ratio. Now that we have done so, I am sure that those involved in the education sector will be happy. It was not possible to do the same in fee paying schools, but in terms of reducing the subsidy to fee paying schools from the public purse, we have done this in a reasonably fair way. The increase in student fees in third level colleges is regrettable and, admittedly, something the Labour Party stated before the general election it would try not to do. We must put up our hands on that one-----