Government comes under renewed attack on motion from Fine Gael over `botched Budget'

The Government came under renewed attack on the Budget during a Dail debate on a Fine Gael private member's motion last night…

The Government came under renewed attack on the Budget during a Dail debate on a Fine Gael private member's motion last night.

The motion, which will be voted on tonight, deplores the introduction of "suspicion and uncertainty" by the Government to the talks on social partnership, and calls for the necessary steps to be taken to reassure the participants of its good faith. It is supported by Labour.

The Tanaiste, however, strongly defended the Government's record on tax reform and providing for social welfare reform and stressed the importance of social partnership.

Ms Harney said any new agreement must deliver responsible wage growth and workers must benefit to the fullest possible extent from economic growth without compromising the competitive strength upon which the State's prosperity was built.

READ MORE

"Any new agreement must provide for gain-sharing in the workplace so that employees can benefit directly from the successful performance of the companies for which they work. Any agreement must provide for a new approach to public sector pay determination, one that enables all those who work in the public service to share in the benefits accruing from change.

"Indeed change, and the management of change, is likely to be one of the central features of any new partnership agreement. We live in a world that is changing at a breathtaking pace. We know that as much as 80 per cent of our technology will be replaced within 10 years."

Ms Harney said the Government wanted to hear the social partners' views, and the best fo rum, indeed the only sensible one, was the negotiating table on a successor to Partnership 2000.

The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, said it was not possible to build a true social partnership on a foundation which devalued the work of the low paid by giving radically larger concessions to the better off. "This Budget does 10 times as much for the three-car, three-holiday family as it does for the average or middle-income family, whether that be single income or double income. That is not fair. How can that help social partnership?"

Mr Bruton said the Government's proposals regarding spouses working in the home had been well discussed already. "A constitutional action is a certainty. I do not believe that it is good for the country that a key element of the Government's tax policy should be the subject of such deep constitutional doubt as is the Budget of this year.

"Ireland has been a success, in economic terms, precisely because our tax policies have been predictable and based on consensus and partnership.

"A potentially unconstitutional income tax policy is, by its nature, deeply uncertain. Its survival will depend on the uncertain outcome of a Supreme Court case."

The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, attacked the Taoiseach. "He is a politician who has built a reputation for being all things to all people, but who has had a particular relationship with the proverbial `ordinary man in the street'. A man who knows what it means to be less well off or low paid. A politician who rejected the confrontational approach and who always worked for consensus.

"He has built a carefully crafted reputation as somebody who knew and understood the trade union movement. He was regarded as having an infallible political nose as to what would or would not be politically acceptable. He is, after all, the politician described by his mentor, Charles Haughey, as the most cunning, the most devious of them all.

"But what are we now to make of this carefully crafted reputation? It is a fraud. The fact is that his reputation is in tatters. He approved a Budget that was designed to benefit the bottom 10 per cent of earners by just 0.7 per cent, but the top 30 per cent by a margin of between 3.7 per cent and 4.4 per cent."

Mr Quinn asked if there ever had been a budget that had been so misjudged by a government and its deputies. "Two weeks on, it is clear that the Budget introduced by Minister McCreevy has been the most inept, ill-judged, socially divisive and unfair in the history of the State.

"The principal victims of this Budget have been the poor, those dependent on social welfare, those on low pay, whose interests were virtually ignored by Minister McCreevy, those parents who choose to work in the home and who were told by the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste and the Minister that their interests did not rate with this Government."

There had been other casualties, including the political reputations of the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste and the Minister for Finance, he added.

"The position of Minister McCreevy is without precedent in Irish politics. He grossly misjudged the mood of the country, of the trade union movement, the Dail and of his own party."

The reason, he added, that Mr McCreevy was still in office was because the Taoiseach shared the blame for the "botched Budget" and the attempts by Mr Ahern to distance himself from his Minister simply would not wash.

"The Taoiseach and the Tanaiste were clearly well aware of the Budget provisions and would have been required to give them their stamp of approval," Mr Quinn said.