Workers’ Party Councillor Ted Tynan said that Minister Brian Lenihan’s budget was drafted to an agenda set down by IBEC and big business and that the minister had bent over backwards to grant their demands while tightening the thumbscrews on working people, the poor and their families.

Cllr. Tynan said "The reduction in excise duty on alcohol and the car scrappage deal is an affront to society.  This budget will force some people to cut back on food and home heating.  It is a perverse government indeed which can cut child allowance but give an effective subsidy to the drinks industry and the motor trade".
 
"Nowhere in this budget do we see any effort to seriously tax the ostentatious wealth that is still being flashed around by the moneyed elite in this society, the one percent who hold one-fifth of this country's wealth.   Nor has any effort been made to reform the banks as part of the NAMA process.  Having gambled away billions they have been given a massive top-up which has been raised by bleeding workers dry and throwing the most vulnerable people to the wolves”, said Cllr. Tynan.

Slash and Burn economics

"This is a budget which makes historic figures like Richie Ryan and Margaret Thatcher seem benevolent.  It is a slash-and-burn budget which has reduced the most marginalised people in society, not just to poverty, but to abject poverty.  The decision to slash Jobseekers payments for young people and cut it for everyone else, in addition to the cut in child benefit is an outright attack on the poor.  Not one single job will be created as a result of this budget, but still we have handouts to businesses in the name of so-called competition”.

"A government with no morals no mandate and no shame"

“In short Minister Lenihan’s budget is an abomination. It is the product of a government which has been bought by big business but paid dearly for by ordinary workers and their families.  It is a government with no morals, no mandate and no shame”,   said Councillor Tynan.

Issued Wednesday, 9th December 2009