The Book of Estimates for spending by Departments next year is a book for the "nags and jags" brigade, the Labour party has claimed. Marie O'Halloran reports.
During the opening of the Dáil debate on the Estimates, the party's finance spokeswoman, Ms Joan Burton, said "no expense would be spared" for the "pet projects" of the Minister for Finance. "No cut is too harsh for those who rely on social welfare. No breach of faith with the electorate too brazen to contemplate."
And Fine Gael's finance spokesman said the Estimates were "full of nasty surprises", and the extent of expenditure growth had been "cleverly concealed".
Mr Richard Bruton said the Estimates were a "recipe for tax increases". Referring to the Minister, Mr McCreevy, he said "the messiah of low taxes seems to have changed to the other side".
The screw was tightening through stealth taxes, and "lurking within the pates of these Estimates are numerous ways in which the ordinary family will be made to pay more, just as public services deteriorate".
However, Mr McCreevy said the Estimates "are the correct prescription for the economic and investment requirements of the country at this time".
Opening the debate, the Minister said that "in assessing our economic prospects and framing our spending policies, we must deal with the world as it is, and not as we would wish it to be".
The Estimates were designed "to ensure that we create the conditions necessary for our economy to be strongly positioned to benefit from the expected international upturn, maintain and create employment, and to increase the share of wealth in the country".
Mr Bruton said there wasn't a single sign of serious reform to deliver better value for money.
"No programmes have been restructured. No bureaucracy has been dismantled. No new systems of evaluation and cost management have been put in place. No renegotiation of benchmarking has taken place to yield genuine value."
He said the "well-placed members of the equine industry and the private hospital sector" were greeted with open arms by the Minister "who fell over himself in his speed to dish out money and valuable tax concessions". Yet the Minister for Social Welfare was forced to squeeze out €58 million from the incomes of people dependent on such supports.
Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) said that in his Estimate's statement last week the Minister spoke of a "tighter approach and greater prioritisation of spending". "Where was this approach when he was bankrolling his pet project in Punchestown in his own constituency? This, like nothing else, symbolises the overall economic mismanagement by this Government."
There was a TV advert that said "know the price or pay the price", said Ms Marian Harkin (Ind, Sligo-Leitrim), and "the Irish public knows that they are paying the price of electing a Government which taxes us by stealth while constantly telling us that we have one of the lowest tax rates in the EU".
Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist, Dublin West) said the cuts in social welfare "speak of a Government whose arrogance now sees its members light years removed from the economic difficulties of ordinary people".