The Estimates hold no real prospects of improved public services, with increases in departments' allocations swallowed almost completely by extra costs, Fine Gael has claimed.
The party's finance spokesman, Mr Michael Noonan, said 1999 would see the taxpayer contributing "significantly more for the same old creaking, inadequate public service".
And he warned: "The yawning gap between in-your-face private wealth and the squalor of inadequate public services will bring this Government down."
He accused the Minister for Finance of having "rolled over savings on the central fund and the huge increase in PRSI receipts arising from increased employment" so that the real increase on all spending programmes was well in excess of the 4 per cent limit set.
"In a year when the Government seem to be planning a budgetary surplus of approximately £1 billion-plus, it seems totally invidious that the PRSI contributions collected to provide pensions and other benefits to insured workers should be raided to increase current expenditure across Government departments."
Mr Noonan added that while the Estimates showed an increase of 5 per cent over 1998 in the public service pay bill, this did not take into account the cost of settling the nurses' current demands or any residual settlement under the Programme for Competitiveness and Work.
"In last year's budgetary statement the Minister deplored the fact that the public pay bill would rise by 6 per cent, describing it as unsustainable and promising to take measures to reduce the rate of increase. The pay bill actually rose by 9 per cent. It is quite clear the Minister has abjectly failed in this objective."
Labour said the "astonishing cutbacks in foreign aid" were one of the worst features of the Estimates and made it understandable that Ms Liz O'Donnell had considered resignation.
In general, according to Labour's finance spokesman, Mr Derek McDowell, the Estimates hid shortfalls in allocations to transport, health, and other major infrastructural projects: "The allocation to capital funding for health is miserable given the disastrous state of our health services in general."
Democratic Left's spokesman on finance, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said Mr McCreevy had "resisted the temptation to present the figures honestly and resorted to the old trick of smoke and mirrors" in pretending he had maintained the 4 per cent limit on spending.
"In fact, the Minister has provided for an increase in current expenditure of 8.6 per cent, an additional £948 million. He contrives to explain that this provision stays within the 4 per cent limit by a number of ruses, including what he terms a `technical adjustment on the Environment vote', involving an illusory £224 million, and savings on the national debt.
"Day-to-day spending will actually rise by close to 10 per cent, but the Minister is factoring in windfall gains from interest-rate reductions, resulting in substantial savings in servicing the national debt and in shuffling money from one category to another and blurring the distinction between current and capital expenditure on roads."
