FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny has claimed the Government's plan to control spending contains "no vision" or "economic stimulation" and that it is ill-thought out and "cobbled together in a half-hearted fashion".
During leaders' questions in the Dáil immediately after the announcement by Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan of the "public spending measures" they intend to take, Mr Kenny said he supported some of the measures which his party had promoted for some time.
These included dealing with "the huge expenditure on public relations and consultants within departments, ministerial pay and pay to higher civil servants, the attempt to halt the shambles that has become effective in terms of the decentralisation programme".
But the Fine Gael leader, who protested that the Government should have made its announcement in the Dáil, questioned how the 3 per cent reduction in payroll costs could be met when €14 billion of the €19 billion public sector payroll came from health and education. "That means you get €150 million [from other departments] outside health and education."
He asked: "Who is going to accept responsibility for failure to meet the 3 per cent reduction in payroll that you mention?"
Mr Cowen said, however, that "the 3 per cent in respect of all other departments, State agencies and local authorities would yield by the end of 2009, taking everything into account, about quarter of a billion".
The Fine Gael leader said that in the Government's four-page document of measures "there is no vision, there is no economic stimulation, there are no anti-inflation measures and it seems to me as if the document is ill-thought out, cobbled together in a half-hearted fashion". Mr Cowen replied that rather than ill-thought out policies, the Government was "trying in fact to ensure that we can work within the social partnership process and work together to try and meet the challenge that we face".
The document "is the initial response by Government to the exchequer mid-year returns which were published last week", and the appropriate and sensible way to proceed was "for Government to take decisions quickly" and to have a full Dáil debate "on all of the issues in which Ministers will come into the House and deal with matters as they affect their own particular departments".
He stressed that the contribution of health and education "should be an agreed process with the Department of Finance, being mindful of the need to protect frontline staff to the greatest extent possible in terms of teachers, nurses, special needs assistants etc".
The Fine Gael leader suggested that the plans for cost savings in the departments of health and education were "full of vague generalities" and showed that the Taoiseach could not get agreement on health and education cuts, even though every department had already done a detailed report on its fiscal position.
Mr Kenny believed that in relation to commitments to overseas development aid, there would be a "robbery" of at least €20 million, although reports suggest €45 million. Mr Cowen said the Government "made a commitment of 0.54 per cent of GNP for 2008 and we would intend honouring that commitment".
Pressing the Taoiseach on the decentralisation programme, the Fine Gael leader suggested the Government's plan meant that "unless a contract has been signed for land acquisition or whatever, this is now effectively dead".
Mr Cowen said that "the issue there is that there are reports due from the decentralisation implementation group in relation to this matter and we are saying that no further decisions to acquire property should take place until that is properly considered by Government."
Voices in the House: Kenny and Cowen on the economy
. . . the document is ill-thought out, cobbled together in a half-hearted fashion.
- Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny
We're trying to ensure, in fact, that we can work within the social partnership process and . . . meet the challenge we face.
- Taoiseach Brian Cowen
Does that mean that unless a contract has been signed for land acquisition or whatever that this is now effectively dead?
- Mr Kenny on decentralisation
No further decisions to acquire property should take place until that [reports from decentralisation implementation group] is properly considered by Government. So we'll see where we go from there.
- Mr Cowen
