Fine Gael and Labour were yesterday accused of using the Dáil to launch their election campaign.

Fianna Fáil’s public expenditure spokesman Seán Fleming claimed the Coalition’s spring statement was “the financial envelope to pay for the election promises”.

“We had similar documents last year and in previous years but because there is to be an election within 12 months; there is a set-piece today,” he said.

“Essentially, the Government is standing down the Dáil from its proper business for a week so we can discuss its financial envelope for the next general election. That is not an appropriate way to start this business.

“The Government has lectured others about spending money in electoral cycles but we have never seen the likes of this happening before.”

The spring statement was criticised by other Opposition TDs as an abuse and a waste of Dáil time.

The announcement took up 3½ hours yesterday and the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste will address the House on the issue today.

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald said the Government had used the House to “spell out your empty and meaningless promises”.

She said: “There is nothing new whatsoever in them – no change in thinking or direction, no real commitment to rebuild society and the economy in the aftermath of catastrophic hardship for so many people, and no real understanding of where things are at for hundreds of thousands of families and workers who are really struggling and are at their wits’ end.”

Hype

Ms McDonald said the hype that this would be a game- changing event but was a repeat of their 2011 election campaigns.

She said: “They replayed the charade that they care about fairness or a decent society as the Minister, Deputy [Brendan] Howlin, loftily announces to the chamber that an economy is not society, and vice versa.

“They used this Dáil chamber to spell out again their empty, meaningless promises but, after all, that is what Labour and Fine Gael do in elections.

“Do they imagine for a second that people cannot see through them? They are fooling no one but themselves.”

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said he had no issue with the timing of the announcement but he did with its content.

He said it was “nauseating” to hear the “self congratulation and triumphing”.

United Left TD Clare Daly said this had been a "backslappers' convention" that even Government backbenchers were embarrassed to sit through it.

Ms Daly said it was an attempt to distract people from the real issues including the Siteserv controversy.

“I want to thank the Government for introducing me to a brand new emotion, which is a kind of combination of, on the one hand, being incredibly underwhelmed and, at the same time, offended by the fanfare that is scheduled for this week.

“That fanfare displays an arrogance that is becoming increasingly a hallmark of this Government.

Backslappers

“While it has scheduled yet another backslappers’ convention for us to have to endure, real issues that were touched on this morning, such as the scandal of Siteserv, goings on at IBRC, the contract for installing water meters, the list of private bodies benefiting from those contracts and the whole Irish Water diaspora debacle, are ignored. It is head-spinning stuff.”

Independent TD Catherine Murphy said the economy may have been stabilised but it came at the expense of society.

Renua leader Lucinda Creighton said the statement was a charade that offered no vision.

“The spring statement should tell us where we want to be in two or five years’ time,” she said.

“It should tell the working poor – be they public sector or private – how we plan to create a process of transformation that will allow them fulfil their potential.

“None of that appears in what is another list of scattered promises that offers us no road map to a genuinely better way of doing things.

“A plan without an objective is merely a list of disorganised thoughts.”