Opposition reaction: Fine Gael:The benefit of the mortgage interest relief will disappear today, Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton claimed.
While welcoming the measures, Mr Bruton added: "That extra €15 a week, which is what it is worth, will be wiped out tomorrow, when interest rates go up by a quarter of one per cent. And that will cost that same person, on an average mortgage, €15 a week. It will not even last a day."
He said that it was the last year in which the current Government would introduce a Budget. "I think a bitter taste has been left with many people. This has not been a Government which has confronted reform. We have not had a serious expenditure review process. We have not had estimates based on measurable performance targets.
"We have had estimates with no programme evaluation. We have multimillion projects committed without any scrutiny."
All the Government's big announcements - decentralisation, e-voting, zero tolerance, waiting lists - had failed, said Mr Bruton. "They have failed for one reason only: they have not recognised that reform is not about courting the flash bulbs and finding the best soundbite for impressing a focus group.
"Reform is about long hours, planning, persuading, about evaluating options, about testing performance, responding to shortcomings, trying again, changing work practices, taking responsibility for failures." Mr Bruton said it had been billed as a "green" Budget.
"I must say I have looked in vain to see the evidence of a serious effort to 'green' this Budget." He accused the Government of "tricking around", of perhaps changing VRT to adjust it to carbon emissions. "But they cannot quite make the commitment. So they are going to leave it for a few more consultation groups, maybe an expert group, maybe an expert group or a consultation here or there." Mr Bruton said an enhanced nursing home subvention was welcome.
"But let us not forget that an old person on €420 a week is too wealthy to get even a penny of nursing home subvention. That is not equity." He said the people would welcome the €16 and €18 extra for pensions.
"But let us also be fairly blunt and honest. With VHI and doctors' fees going up, that will take about €4; with energy prices going up, that will take another €4. And with the tax take out of the remainder, that will represent about €3.
"There will not be much left for luxuries for old people who will get €16 a week in their pension."
Mr Bruton said there should have been an increase in the fuel scheme to acknowledge the huge burdens families were under. "Only one in seven of all social welfare recipients get the fuel scheme. Only seven per cent of contributory pensioners get the fuel scheme."
Labour Party
Tax cuts in the Budget "are really no more than delayed compensation for the punitive measures imposed in three previous budgets", Labour's finance spokeswoman Joan Burton claimed.
She said Minister for Finance Brian Cowen had "built up the reserves to pay for the cuts by quite a vicious regime of hidden increases, stealth taxes and charges for the past four years".
The measures marked a "typical Fianna Fáil/PD Budget - for the wealthy, not the hardworking many".
The Dublin West deputy said that a "1 per cent cut in the top tax rate is worth zilch to a person earning today less than €34,000 a year". There were 1.7 million workers who paid tax at 20 per cent or less so the cut was worth nothing to them. However, for someone earning €84,000 the tax cut would be worth €520. For those earning €168,000 it was worth €1,360 and €1,903 to those earning €250,000.
Ms Burton added that the quarter per cent increase in interest rates due today would mean €63 increase on the average mortgage of a Dublin home of €330,000. This would "almost completely wipe out" all the increases in the Budget.
In her address to the Dáil after the Minister's Budget speech, she said that "it tells a lot about this Government that it cuts the top rate but not the lower one and that it pays for the reduction by reducing the scope of other tax reductions. We have always argued that a wider standard rate band and additional tax credits are the best ways to achieve tax justice."
She said that Mr Cowen shared this view, but "what we have here today is tax reform for slow learners. In fact it is for very slow learners with very serious injustices inflicted en route to those forced to pay 42 per cent tax plus PRSI on very modest overtime payments or on bonuses or wage increases."
Ms Burton said: "Fianna Fáil sees an election around the corner and the first instinct is to buy it. This Budget is not as crude as the one for election year 2002, but for all of that when the sums are done it's not that far out," Ms Burton said.
"Despite the glowing promises made before the last election and the unprecedented tax revenues that you've enjoyed, improvements in public services have not been delivered. The promised increases in beds in our hospitals - we're still waiting. The promised reduction in class sizes to 20 for children of nine and under - we're still waiting. The promised levels of social and affordable housing for young people starting out - Minister, we're still waiting."
The package for care in the community was a "sticking plaster measure that will go nowhere near the core of the problems in our healthcare system".
The Minister might not have wanted to tinker with stamp duty but he "could have closed down the loophole where the guys who bought the site of the glass bottle company in Ringsend, saved €30 million in stamp duty". ...
Green Party
The Government's attitude on environmental measures was "the ultimate in cynicism", the Green party has claimed.
Finance spokesman Dan Boyle said the Government was "kicking to touch" on measures to change both VRT and motor taxation charges for emissions.
"Send out a signal and by 2008, after the election we might put the measures in place," was the attitude rather than adopting the measures now, he said.
He added that most of the proposed €300 million expenditure on environmental measures would be spent on paying fines. The Budget "isn't green at all but is really blue".
A total of about €300 million would be spent on environmental issues, but "90 per cent of that money will be going out of the country in environmental fines as the result of the failure of ongoing Government policies".
That €270 million "could have been producing jobs. We could have looked at the area of the recyling industry, energy technology industry. But the Minister is choosing to pay the fines rather than doing work to improve our environment."
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin's Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin described the Government as "sticking plaster operators".
People earning just below the average industrial wage - €30,000 - gain least. They will gain €8 a week compared to twice that for people on or above €35,000.
This was another example of "warped thinking. We're not looking seriously at those who need it most.
"You're rewarding everyone as you see it right across the board instead of focusing on trying to eradicate poverty in our midst".
He said to the Government: "You are not people of vision. You have failed once again to use a golden opportunity to make a critical difference in the lives of those who depend on you most and shame on you for that."
Ïndependents
Tony Gregory (Ind, Dublin Central) said that while the Budget would double the ceiling on mortgage interest relief for first- time buyers "rising interest rates will neutralise its effect".
Speaking on behalf of the Independent TDs in the Dáil, Mr Gregory highlighted problems they had raised, in public services, health, social welfare and housing.
"Owning a home of one's own has become unattainable for many of our people and for many more the one way they can achieve this basic human right is to take on crippling, lifelong mortgages."
The Government "failed to take action to control the price of building land, the only measure that would have kept down house prices. This same Government capitulated to their builder developer friends".
The Coalition should have "stood firm against the cartel of builders but they shamefully let the people down. That would have put the common good against vested interests".
In his Dublin Central constituency the average price of a house was now more than €420,000. Young people were being forced out of their communities by unaffordable prices and "many must leave Dublin to buy an affordable home."