Burton accuses Minister of 'picking on children'

LABOUR REACTION:LABOUR FINANCE spokeswoman Joan Burton has claimed the Minister for Finance "blew it" with Budget 2010, and the strategy was one where "burden-sharing, like taxation, is just for the little people".

She also described Brian Lenihan’s Budget statement as a kind of a Top Gear budget – a “lad’s budget” with a decrease in the cost of drink and the scrappage scheme for cars.

Budgets “are about choices, and your choices are to impose a burden of pain on families with children, on people on social welfare”.

She said the Minster estimated the contribution of the wealthy in the Budget at “€55 million”.

“That’s about 1.5 per cent of the total Budget adjustment package of €4 billion.”

She added: “It’s the cleaner working in the public services who has two children who’ll be paying the bulk of the burden-sharing and carrying the bulk of it, although she’ll undoubtedly be delighted to have a job, and I’m sure you won’t stop reminding her of that.”

During a 45-minute response to Mr Lenihan’s Budget statement, Ms Burton said: “Last month we had Nama, and in many ways Nama was the bailout of the guilty, who drove this economy – helped and abetted by Fianna Fáil – to ruin.”

She added that “Fianna Fáil’s hit single for Christmas is going to be ‘I saw Nama killing Santa Claus’ because parents who’ve suffered a cut in child benefit – it’s to pay for the bailout for the banks and developers”.

Ms Burton said: “We have poor bankers struggling through the business pages on the awfulness of €500,000 a year. They don’t have to contribute anything extra in this Budget.”

Accusing the Minister of “picking on children”, she said he had “slowed down the building of schools. You’ve slashed affordable childcare. You’ve abandoned plans for pre-school education.”

However, “the saddest part of your own pre-Budget outlook was your acceptance that under your Budget, unemployment would go up next year by another 75,000 people”. The Government was “so obsessed with rescuing banks at any cost that you cannot face the awesome jobs and unemployment challenge that ought to gain your attention”.

She added: “You’ve devoted enormous energy and resources to protecting the property economy through Nama, but there hasn’t been a fraction of that energy devoted to the knowledge economy.”

The Minister had “some nerve” to quote US senator Ted Kennedy, “who was not afraid . . . to say that rich people in a republic should pay their fair share of the tax”.