DÁIL REPORT:FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny has challenged Taoiseach Brian Cowen to put the Budget "to the people" in a general election.

During leaders’ questions in the Dáil an hour before the introduction of the Budget, Mr Kenny said “the people are going to be penalised for the mistakes of your party in office”.

But Mr Cowen said the Dáil would decide whether it supported the Budget and the Government would “get on with the business that people expect us to do and that is to make the necessary adjustments”.

The Fine Gael leader said “the Irish people have convicted Fianna Fáil and they’re waiting for you but you don’t have the courage to rise to that challenge politically”.

The numbers unemployed had increased from 154,000 at the time of the general election in May 2007 to 273,000 plus.

That was “more than double the population of your own Laois Offaly constituency at 103,673”, he said.

Challenging the Taoiseach to call a general election, the Fine Gael leader said in May 2007 at the last election, “the greatest con job of all was pulled by you” when the Government claimed “that 97 per cent of the taxpayers of Ireland would be better off under Fianna Fáil”.

He also noted “the interview given by Minister of State McGuinness today when he said in the last budget that ‘the two Brians made a bags of it’ and that it was unfair”.

But the Taoiseach said “the people I believe are ready to take whatever sacrifices are necessary in the interests of the next generation, in the interest of getting this right in the period ahead”.

And referring to 2007, he said “it was true that based on your tax proposals people would be to that extent better off under us than you”. But it was a “totally different world” now.

The public “know there is no silver bullet” and it “will involve people having to take some steps back in order to go forward again”, he said.

But “unlike you Deputy Kenny, I do say to the people openly and honestly that, yes, there will be of course greater imposition of tax” but at the same time “it is far better to be straight and honest about that”.

Later, the Taoiseach was urged by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore to publish the report compiled by Dr Peter Bacon about isolating bad debts, even as a Green Paper on banking.

Mr Cowen said “the whole motivation of the Government here is to ensure that we get the Irish banking system to serve the people in terms of its core franchise in providing lending capacity to families, personal borrowers and Irish businesses to enable us to protect as many jobs as possible”.

“As you know, there is an EU set of guidelines set out in relation to how one deals with what are called impaired assets. We will, obviously, be working within that framework,” the Taoiseach added.

Mr Gilmore said the scale of what was intended was very large.

“What has been done already is very large: the guarantee exposes the Irish taxpayer in an enormous way, while the cost of the capitalisation is about double what you are going to do in the Budget apparently,” the Labour leader added.

There had been speculation in recent days that there were proposals being considered by Government to effectively use taxpayers’ money to buy up the bad loans for half-finished housing estates, the land which was bought at enormously inflated prices and the property speculated on.

Mr Cowen said the whole purpose and motivation of Government involvement and policy was to try to ensure that financial stability was retained.