Nasty surprises will take days to come to light, claims McGrath
As the Government was accused last night of dashing the hopes of struggling families with stealth charges and spending cuts, opposition parties claimed Fine Gael and Labour failed to give any hope to the unemployed and left people crying out for fairness.
Mr McGrath said the budget’s impact “will be felt hardest by low and middle-income families with children, by young people with disabilities, by vulnerable elderly people and by students trying to build a better future”.
“You had the option of closing loopholes and targeting higher income earners. Instead you have played your trump card by increasing VAT in the first year of the Government’s five-year life.”
Mr McGrath said the Government would now be judged on its own actions and could no longer hide behind the decisions of the previous Fianna Fáil/Green Party coalition.
He said the EU and IMF did not tell the Government to cut child benefit for third and subsequent children, to increase the drug payment scheme threshold, to cut the fuel allowance to vulnerable elderly people, and to breach its own pay cap to give one of its special advisers a €35,000 pay rise.
“These were political choices made by Fine Gael and Labour,” he said.
Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty accused the Cabinet of making a litany of broken promises since elected nine months ago. He maintained that Fine Gael and Labour had dashed the hopes of voters who put their faith in them for change.
“People are watching your budget speech today and they will be numbed as they add up the total loss of income from your stealth charges and spending cuts,” he said.
“They have had two days of bad news — cuts and taxes mounted on top of each other, with no regard as to how they are meant to pay for any of it. Ordinary families are crying out for fairness.”
Socialist TD Joe Higgins claimed the measures would result in a massive net transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the rich.
He said bending over backwards with tax breaks and loading tax burdens on ordinary people would do nothing to encourage job creation, contrary to the claims of Mr Noonan.
“Austerity measures have failed us since the crisis began and will continue to fail us,” he said.
Meanwhile, former Green Party minister Eamon Ryan, a member of the coalition when the IMF was called in, described the budget as regressive.
“It was like an old-fashioned Fianna Fáil budget,” said Mr Ryan.
“Good for the builders, the buying and selling of bullocks, the gambler, and not good for the planet.
“At the end”, he said, “we have to learn from the mistakes of the past, but you wouldn’t think so after that.”
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