ReactionThe Opposition has criticised the tax changes in the Budget, pointing out that the Government has failed to compensate workers for stealth charges in the previous two Budgets.

The Government was also attacked last night for its failure to unwind tax breaks used by the wealthy to reduce or eliminate their exposure to tax.

Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, said the €250 million cost of the tax package was the equivalent of 0.6 per cent of the Government's total tax revenue. Such figures showed "how little" the Government was prepared to give to workers, he said.

The changes amounted to only a partial reversal of the effective taxation increases in taxation in 2002 and 2003 when Mr Charlie McCreevy failed to index-link the standard tax band.

The party's environment spokesman, Mr Fergus O'Dowd, said the Minister for Finance, Mr Cowen, had missed a golden opportunity to take all first-time buyers of second-hand homes out of the stamp duty net.

"The issue is that the present average price for second-hand homes in Dublin is equal to or greater than his ceiling for stamp duty of €317,000 so every first-time buyer of second-hand houses will be paying stamp duty in Dublin," he said.

Labour's finance spokeswoman, Ms Joan Burton, said that while Mr Cowen had undone some of the damage done in the previous two Budgets through the increases in the standard tax band and personal tax credits, there should no self-satisfaction for giving back what the Government had taken by stealth.

The Green Party's finance spokesman, Mr Dan Boyle, accused Mr Cowen of "kicking to touch" on the tax breaks issue. The Minister's review of the tax break regime "must be seen as one of the glaringly sore points" of the Budget, he said.

The Sinn Féin TD, Mr Arthur Morgan, said the Budget was a "very belated admission" that the Government's previous budgets had failed to address gross inequality or eliminate poverty.