Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt that the budget has been prepared with a view to picking people off and pitting one section of society against the other. It is also clear that one of the major spending Departments, the Department of Health, does not have a clue about what is going on. The Labour Party should investigate what is happening before it attempts to deny that assertion. Many of the children who will receive the under-five GP card will in the process lose their medical cards because the overall cuts to medical cards are far greater than the allocation for GP cards. The Senators opposite shook their heads two years ago when I warned them about small school class sizes because they did not look at the details. That is still happening.