New agency a huge gamble - Bruton

FINE GAEL REACTION:THE NEW National Asset management Agency was described as "a massive gamble" by Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton. "We are told that the Government is going to ask the taxpayer to shoulder €90 billion in terms of toxic loans," he said.

Mr Bruton asked what protection existed for the taxpayer. “These are assets which the market refuses to touch,” he said.

There was no information on whether taxpayers would recover their money if it all “went all west”.

Mr Bruton claimed there was no basis for making an act of faith in the Government when many of the people managing the banks were the same people who had “managed” the State into a deep crisis.

Fine Gael, he said, had believed that the Budget would be all about employment. The balance of the measures his party would adopt would be designed to protect employment at every opportunity. The Government had taken the soft option and was not willing to address its own spending, said Mr Bruton.

He said that the cruel choices that had to be faced were not the product of bad luck but the product of bad government.

“What people see, as they look at this Budget, and the history of the last number of months, is that the banks bailed out the developers and the Government bailed out the banks.

“Today, the taxpayer is being asked to bail out the Government, once again. The question I ask is: who is going to bail out the taxpayer?”

Mr Bruton said that the Budget was adding almost another €2 billion to the tax bill which had to be paid by every family.

This was on top of the €2 billion which was added last October. For many families, the extra burden would be about €2,500 as a result of the two budgets.

“Even people on very modest incomes are going to be paying huge increases in their average tax bill,” Mr Bruton added.

He said that it was deeply depressing that there had been no effort at reform.

“We have report after report, group after group sitting on issues . . . we have a group sitting on taxation and its influence has not been reflected in the Budget.

“We have a group sitting on public spending . . . we have a group sitting on public service reform.”

He added that if a Minister did not focus on the need for genuine reform in a crisis, then the State was seriously lost.