De Rossa acts to east Government tensions on jobless proposals

THE Cabinet meets this afternoon to put the final touches to tomorrow's Budget, which is designed to benefit both the long term unemployed and taxpayers.

In advance of this meeting, the Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, moved yesterday to calm the inter party dissension in the Government over the unemployment proposals. Democratic Left, he said, would achieve some of what it wanted in the Budget negotiations, just as Fine Gael and Labour would.

Responding to opposition criticism about the recent instability in the Cabinet, he said the import ant thing about the Government was that it was "so stable".

"I have to say this Government is working very well. It has put together a very good Budget. The public will, I think, recognise that it is a balanced Budget in favour of families, workers and the unemployed when it is unveiled by the Minister for Finance on Tuesday," Mr De Rossa said.

It was still evident yesterday however, that the intervention by Mr Pat Rabbitte on RTE - contradicting the Tanaiste's claim that the report of the task force on long term unemployment was the Government's definitive response to the problem - was a continuing source of rancour between Ministers.

Despite the public rebuke of Mr Rabbitte by the Coalition leaders on Friday, Democratic Left sources maintained that tomorrow's Budget would show whether the task force report was the total definitive package or not.

Some minor items were left to be ironed out by officials at the weekend in advance of today's final Budget meeting at 5 p.m. It was decided to bring the normal Tuesday Cabinet meeting forward to this evening to facilitate the Minister for Finance's final Budget preparations.

Besides the package geared to help the long term unemployed, the Minister, Mr Quinn, is expected to award up to £200 million in tax reductions and £100 million in social welfare increases.

The Fianna Fail spokesman on social welfare, Mr Joe Walsh warned Mr De Rossa yesterday of his grave responsibility to ensure that substantial increases were provided for social welfare recipients, particularly elderly citizens, in the Budget.

The Labour TD Mr Joe Costello strongly criticised opposition statements as "utterly, hypocritical".

On the one hand they castigate the Government for high levels of unemployment. When it becomes clear that the Government is producing a major assault on long term unemployment and preparing to spend a substantial amount of money in the Budget for that purpose, they shout `Foul'."

There was also criticism of tax relief for the low paid, he said, adding that "when the veneer of fine words is removed" the opposition was "being selfish and unpatriotic".