This article was published in the Evening Echo on Friday 10th April 2009 in response to the emergency budget.

What we needed was a Budget designed to stimulate the economy, protect and create jobs and reform our whole system. What we got was a vicious attack on low and middle income families with the promise of more anti-family measures to come down the line.

Many families will be brought to their knees by the taxes and levies imposed in this budget. Brian Cowen and his Government targeted the wrong areas and the wrong people for tax increases and after a decade of ducking difficult decisions found it impossible to implement the widespread reform necessary to tackle the challenges we face.

This Budget’s focus on tax increases results in ordinary families picking up the tab for a decade of Government mistakes and mismanagement.

A family with two children on an income of €60,000 will lose €4,600 in extra taxes as a result of this Budget. That represents an 8% cut in the family income. Between this budget and last October’s effort this family will lose €8,100 per year.

With 520,000 people expected on the dole next year, the absence of any plan to get people back to work is an astonishing omission from the budget.

This Budget shows no evidence that employment is a Government priority. There is no stimulus package, no pro-jobs tax measures and no real sense that the Government have any idea of how to get the country moving again.

In the long term our children and grandchildren will remember this budget for the decision to take a massive €90 billion gamble with their future. Fianna Fáil and their Green sidekicks have decided to take a long odds gamble on behalf of the taxpayer in bailing out the very property speculators and banks that dragged our economy over a cliff.

Rather than adopt the Fine Gael policy which would see the banks being responsible for their bad debts, it is now the taxpayer that is exposed. We have precious little by way of detail about this new bailout plan for the property speculators and banks and the real risk is that this bailout will leave the taxpayer exposed to the bad debts of others.

When our Finance Spokesperson Richard Bruton launched our pre-budget analysis he outlined that our core focus was on the need to support jobs, sort out the national finances and reform government.

Six point plan to support jobs
1. Protect the jobs that we still have.
• Cut the lower rate of VAT from 13.5% to 10% until 2011.
• Reverse the 0.5% increase in the standard rate to 21.5%
• No employers PRSI for new jobs.
• Abolish airport tax
• Support Small & Medium Enterprises.
2. Repair the public finances quickly.
• Restore investor and consumer confidence
• Focus on tackling the structural deficit
3. Reinvent government to cut costs.
• Target 20% cut in the cost of running Government by 2012.
• Competent accountable government with fewer agencies and ministers.
• Hiring restrictions and redundancy programme for 15,000
• Pay freezes and cuts at the top end
• New performance budgeting for smarter government
4. Keep the incentive to work and invest.
• Commit to 12.5% corporation tax
• No change to 20% or 41% rates of income tax.
• Broaden PRSI base.
• Temporary tax on high incomes on 2% over €100k and 4% over €250k.
• Cap subsidy for high end pensions.
5. Confront costs in sheltered sectors.
• Extend pay freeze to banking and utilities
• Name and shame rip off merchants
• Tackle rising insurance costs
• Cost benchmarks for regulated utilities
6. Invest boldly to create new jobs

Job Creation
A further 17,000 people joined the Live Register in March. The numbers unemployed has increased by 87.5% in the 12 months since March last year, the highest rate of increase ever. Almost 80,000 of the 371,000 on the live register in March 2009 are under 25. We simply have to get a grip on the jobs crisis if we are to get a grip on the national financial crisis.

Fine Gael has offered what the Government has not, an €11bn stimulus plan to kick start the Irish economy and generate 100,000 jobs over the next four years.

Our “Rebuilding Ireland” plan involves the creation of a new industrial development holding company, NewERA (New Economy and Recovery Authority) that will be responsible for delivering a targeted series of large scale investments in green energy power generation, telecoms and broadband roll-out and an upgrading of all our water distribution and treatment networks. The ambition is to provide a stimulus plan that will turn Ireland in to the most competitive and sustainable economy in Europe.

A Government incapable of admitting to a decade of mistakes, mismanagement and madness chose instead to blame everyone except their Galway tent developer friends, force low and middle income families to pick up the bill for their party and gamble our children’s future on a scheme to bailout banks and builders.