The Labour Party has accused the Minister for Finance of illegally taking money from the social insurance fund. "This Budget is a lie, a fraud and a disgrace," said the party's finance spokesman, Mr Derek McDowell. Mr McCreevy "has taken money illegally and disgracefully from the social insurance fund. The members on the Fianna Fβil benches told me a year ago, when I suggested that we might defer some payment into the pension fund available from 2025 onwards, that I was raiding the fund." Yet the Minister "has the gall to stand up here today and say he will take €600 million from funds provided by the workers and employers of this country".

He was claiming he did not have to borrow money but that was a "lie". The social insurance fund was a "nest egg", a fund available for paying social insurance benefits "not notionally but legally". It was not the Government's money "to spend as you choose".

The money "doesn't belong to you, Minister, simply to balance your books," Mr McDowell said. "That money belongs to the pensioners of this country. There is a straight trade-off between the pensions, the benefits, which we pay to people who need them, and the money that you've just taken away."

The Minister had taken it " so that you can tell people as you have several times today that you didn't have to borrow. It is a disgrace and a lie, and when the phone-call comes in tonight from our friends in congress, Taoiseach, you will know all about it."

There would be a surplus this year of about €100 million, he said, but next year the full account of what happened this year would come into play. "Next year, based on what the Minister has done this year we end up with an Exchequer borrowing requirement, or rather a deficit, of €2,347 million. That's the figure we should be looking at today. That is the real cost of what this Minister has done today."

Mr McDowell said the Taoiseach would rue the day that that precedent and principle was accepted. He said the Opposition would "vigorously oppose" the two pieces of legislation the Government required to give "some veneer of legitimacy to what you've done today".

The Green Party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, said the "champagne Charlie" Minister was drinking from a glass that had lost its fizz. Under this Government, he said, people had become for a whole range of reasons more vulnerable. During a period of unprecedented wealth in State coffers, "those most in need of help have seen their situation get worse while those with sufficient wealth have grown richer and richer".