McCreevy `panders to rich'

This year's budget is "crude", "populist" and panders to the rich, according to the Green party spokesman, Mr John Gormley. It seeks to continue the myth that Ireland has a successful economy, but for whom? "Is it successful for the 30 per cent of the economy who continue to rely on social welfare payments or for the long-term unemployed who are surplus to economic requirements?"

Carers have waited patiently for easier access to social welfare allowances and fairer treatment in the tax system, he said. The Minister has offered them bus passes when one of the richest organisations in the State - the GAA - has been given £20 million. That is "quite scandalous".

In this Budget the Minister has had an opportunity to ensure that an unprecedented prosperity is divided in a socially equitable way.

Mr Gormley reminded the Dail that this year is the 20th anniversary of the Fianna Fail "giveaway manifesto that did untold damage to the economy and Irish society".

There is a similar inclination in this Budget. "It is a crude, populist Budget that lacks vision, that panders to the comfortable voting class, the vested interests and the paymasters of the establishment parties."

The social welfare package seems on the surface to be very generous. However, social welfare recipients are getting eventual increases above inflation but below the rate of economic growth, meaning that they will slip further behind in the prosperity stakes.

The additional expenditure for the elderly is to be welcomed but the Minister has to accept that this sector needs to be given far more before catching up with the wilder excesses of the Celtic Tiger.

Reducing the top rate of tax by 2 percentage points is socially inequitable. Tax allowances have been adjusted only marginally. The increase in exemption from PRSI is to be welcomed but "the tax burden is still being born disproportionately by low and middle income earners".