This week's Budget was focused on undoing the damage done by Fianna Fáil and the PDs since the last general election, Labour leader Mr Pat Rabbitte claimed today.
In a speech to the National Conference of Labour Women in Dublin's Mansion House, Mr Rabbitte said it was not a budget based on "a coherent vision of what our society can be, and how Government can contribute to building that society."
He said: "A few sticking plasters over the accumulated sores of seven years of right-wing Government, is not progressive politics".
The Labour leader said: "Most of the new policy initiatives launched in the last two weeks have been in response to pressure from the Labour Party".
But he said there was nothing in the Budget "for childcare, nothing for pre-school education, nothing for the 25 per cent of primary school children who must learn in classes of 30 or more, nothing for child dependent allowances."
"If you were genuinely committed to building a fair society, your starting point would be children," he said.
Mr Rabbitte claimed the Government looked electoral meltdown in the face last June and since then had "embarked on a desperate survival strategy".
"But, that is not the same as having a coherent view of the issues that face hard working families in the modern Ireland, and having a strategy to deal with them," he said.