Opposition attacks Budget

OPPOSITION parties yesterday began a more robust attack on Finance Minister Brian Cowen’s first Budget, after a comparatively muted response on Budget Day.

And Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, in his first detailed response to the Budget, again referred to himself as a left-winger. He told RTÉ: “The other socialists would wreck the economy. They like high taxes. They like to wreck business and they like to go after businesses as if there’s something evil about them.

“My view is that I like people who create wealth and I like people who pay their taxes on that wealth because that allows me to help people who need their help,” he said.

However, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny dismissed that claim in the Dáil. “It is neither socialist nor left-wing and it is not about caring and sharing. Its philosophy is expediency alone. It is driven by the necessity to respond to the verdict of the people on 11 June 2004,” he said of the Budget

“It is, at best, a catch-up budget; a reluctant and rueful effort to address gross Government-generated inequality,” he said.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said the Budget had only begun to repair the “deep damage” caused to Irish society during Charlie McCreevy’s tenure.

Mr Rabbitte also pointed out that Mr Cowen was “forced” to allocate €680m to fund decentralisation. He criticised Mr Cowen for doing nothing to target tax breaks and “freeloading millionaires” other than announce “yet another review”.

By contrast, he said, an extra 20,000 taxpayers would have to pay tax at the top rate next year.

Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins questioned Mr Ahern’s brand of socialism. “It is that multinational corporations and the rich create wealth and he can then take crumbs from their table to distribute to the huddled masses. The lesson I want to give the Taoiseach is that it is the labour by the hands and brains of working people, and only that, that creates wealth.”

Green Party leader Trevor Sargent portrayed the Budget as lacking imagination and courage. There was, he said, “an absence of strategy, other than electoral strategy”.

Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said that opportunities to create real change had been “deliberately spurned.”