Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will finish on this point. I put it to the Minister of State that there is a bomb waiting to go off in the Department of Health. It is all over the place and all of those in the Government know it. I refer to the fact that there are €600 million to €700 million in additional cuts which the Minister for Health cannot deliver and he has had to bring in the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and every other Minister on this. It is a bomb waiting to go off. The €113 million savings on foot of the discretionary medical cards that will be taken off people next year and the additional €25 million worth of medical cards that will be taken off the over 70s will come back and bite the Government big time. The Minister of State should not come in here and say this budget is fair. It is not fair. The last two budgets the Government introduced were seen as the most regressive, unfair budgets of the last six. That is what the ESRI said. This budget is incredibly unfair. The Government could have gone after people who had money but it did not because Fine Gael protects the wealthy and the privileged and the Labour Party do not have the guts or gumption to stick that to them and to make sure they protect the people that they supposedly serve.