THE BUDGET provisions would cost an average family with two children €4,600 annually, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny told the Dáil. When added to the tax increases last October, the total income deduction would be €7,000, he added.

“The tax increases will outweigh cuts in day-to-day spending by three to one this year and by over two to one in the coming three years,” said Mr Kenny.

“That is the wrong direction to take. It is the wrong placing of the Government’s sail if, as the Taoiseach says, it cannot do anything about the wind.”

During the resumed Budget debate, he urged the Taoiseach to go out on to the streets and talk to people or phone his own people in Laois-Offaly, the small businesses and shopkeepers who had ideas.

“I asked a senior Minister yesterday how much he had lost out of his department. He said that the problem in his department was that he had been unable to get the associated quangos and agencies to cut administrative costs,” Mr Kenny continued.

“I said that the Minister is appointed to do that, but the Government has not tackled that problem.”

Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore said it was a “Budget on a timer” and people would not feel its full impact until they got their pay packets in May.

“That is not all, because there is more to come,” said Mr Gilmore. “The Minister for Finance signalled yesterday that taxes will go up again in the next budget and that we may be facing a tax on the family home and that charges for services may be increased.”

He added that the only concession to the concept of fairness in the Budget was “the perverse idea that if one screws the working middle class, one should also screw the poor”.

The Minister had taken the Christmas bonus off pensioners and others on social welfare and those on the minimum wage were brought into the tax net.

“This Budget is an abject admission of economic failure by Fianna Fáil,” the Labour leader added.

“The Minister could not bring himself to say it yesterday because for Fianna Fáil, ‘sorry’ is always the hardest word.”