Spring statement an exercise in self-congratulation, says Michael McGrath

Speeches on the economy by Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin were an exercise in mutual back-slapping and self-congratulation, Fianna Fáil has claimed.

In a sharp attack on the economic statements by the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath said they were a “classic example of a Government overpromising and underdelivering”.

The Fianna Fáil finance spokesman told the Dáil he could not find a single element that would bring short-term benefit to families.

Mr McGrath said the Ministers could have said the bank veto would end immediately, or that they would not tolerate the excessively high standard variable rates banks are charging.

Respite grant

He also suggested they could have announced the introduction of legislation to restore the €325 cut to the respite grant to restore full payment to carers.

The Cork South Central TD said he welcomed the “fundamental shift” in the Government’s budgetary policy from €2 of expenditure cuts for €1 of tax increases during the austerity era.

“Today you have shifted to what we have been advocating for a prolonged period of time, which is a 50:50 scenario.”

However, he accused the Government of doing “enormous damage” to society in the manner in which it introduced fiscal consolidation in the last four budgets.

The Government was in complete denial of what was going on in society, including “the 1,000 children who will be sleeping in emergency accommodation in Dublin tonight”.

He said a full Croke Park on All-Ireland final day accommodated more than 80,000 people. “Multiply that figure by five and it approximates to the more than 400,000 people who are waiting today for hospital outpatient appointments.”

Mr McGrath said for every month the Government remained in power, divisions in society grew deeper. The budgets of the last four years had proportionately taken much more from those on low and middle incomes than from those on the highest incomes.

Something back

In last October’s budget, which he described as the first time in a decade that there was scope to give something back, “the Government gave it back to those on the highest incomes”.

He hit out at Mr Noonan’s comments about the boom-and-bust policies of the previous government. They rang hollow, he said, because “your party and Labour subscribed to every single ingredient of boom-and-bust politics”.

Mr McGrath said a fair and broad-based recovery was required. “Towns and villages across this country are dying but the Government does not seem to care one iota about them.”

The Government had been issuing “carefully orchestrated leaks to the media” of the benefits that would be announced in the spring statement.

“We see nothing new in the document you have released today. It is more about raw politics than economic management.”