Opposition deride Lenihan as puppet whose strings are pulled by the IMF
Fine Gael finance spokesperson Michael Noonan rounded on the €6 billion package of cuts and tax hikes as a missed opportunity to kick-start growth through job creation, while Labour insisted it was the dying gasp of a failed administration.
Sinn Féin went further, saying the budget amounted to “economic treason”.
Mr Noonan insisted a “New Ireland” could be forged out of the mistakes of the past two years, but the current administration’s credibility was in tatters at home and abroad.
“The Government’s policies have wrecked the economy, they have destroyed the confidence of the people, they have put 450,000 people out of work, they have forced over 100,000 of our adult children to emigrate, they have increased poverty and they have undermined any concept of social justice in our society,” Mr Noonan said.
The one-time Fine Gael leader said the package did not contain a single progressive idea to deal with the fact Ireland had become insolvent due to Mr Lenihan’s banking policy.
“I wonder do members of the Government ever feel ashamed?” he asked in the Dáil.
Mr Noonan added he had felt ashamed to read the letters from the Government to the IMF and European Central Bank over the bailout.
“If it wasn’t so serious it would be kind of funny, because, when you read the letters, they sound like confessions beaten out of you. It’s like as if they water-boarded you in Merrion Street and made you sign the letters,” he said.
He said a more generous country was now needed and quoted Michael Collins, saying that Ireland “needed to be loved.”
Labour’s Joan Burton called the budget the last sting of a dying wasp.
“But it’s a pretty vicious sting and one that carries a long tail life, not just for today, but for the next four years,” she said. “The people who will feel the biggest sting will be people with children.”
Ms Burton said the winners from the budget were the banks, while a family with three children would lose €40 a month in child benefit.
She claimed there was nothing in the budget to get credit flowing for small and medium businesses.
“Of all the catchphrases and soundbites that come from this set of dejected ministers, nothing grates more than the sound of the two Brians repeating we’re all in this together as their mantra,” she said.
“Well I have news for them. Nothing in this budget offers a shred of evidence that they really believe this themselves. In fact, every line of the budget suggests the exact opposite,” she said.
Sinn Féin said the budget was a disgrace.
Newly-elected finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said it was a full frontal attack on the lowest-income earners and the unemployed. And he said it amounted to a recipe for economic suicide.
“It is times like this when you have to think, what would the founders of this state think about what has gone on earlier today in this chamber?
“What would people who struggled into being, the people who gave their lives, the people who laboured to bring the Dáil into being, to bring the dream of the Proclamation into being . . . I’m sure that they would be ashamed by what has gone on in this chamber today,” he said.
