This year's Budget is a "camel of a budget with lumps and bumps but no underlying fiscal policy," Fine Gael's finance spokesman told the Dail.
Mr Michael Noonan said a camel was a horse designed by committee and this year's Budget had all the signs of a "budget by committee" with the social partners riding shotgun on the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, because of last year's disaster. "You have persisted with individualisation. I admire your courage," the Fine Gael spokesman added, particularly when a family with one earner would enter the top tax rate after £29,000 and two income families would be at that rate after £40,000.
Mr Noonan said it was a pity to see a man who built his reputation on fiscal prudence being reduced to a "type of Santa Claus figure dispensing largesse without any underlying fiscal policy, with various elements of the Budget contradicting other elements".
The overall income tax burden has not been cut, he said. The Tanaiste had succeeded in cutting the top rate from 44 per cent to 42 per cent. People would enter the tax net at £144. "If you didn't cut the top rate you could have taken that up another £10 a week. Who needs it more?" Who gained most, he asked? "You can see that this Budget has the old faults of all the Budgets you introduced - the more you earn the more you get."
Inflation causes industrial chaos and "you have sown the seeds today for more industrial chaos," he said. Apart from the social partners, his Ministerial colleagues ran the "metal detector over the Budget to ensure there weren't any landmines".
He said the spin from Government buildings was that they had the Minister for Finance almost under house arrest. "The Government whip was let in occasionally with the bread and water or the bowl of tinned gruel. And occasionally also the Tanaiste smuggled in a food parcel."
Most people would be saying "we're getting back some of the taxes that we have paid already" and getting back what the Minister for Finance took from them.
As Government backbenchers jeered him the Fine Gael spokesman asked "why are Fianna Fail backbenchers like snails? They are slow and crawly, leave a trail and pull in their horns when there's trouble - a little bit slimy on occasions".
The economy was overheating and the Budget with the Book of Estimates and the other recent announcements, "puts our prosperity at risk". The Government in the Budget and Book of Estimates" has injected about £4.5 billion of extra demand. This will fuel inflation and its twin - congestion."
Women are being conscripted into the workforce by the individualisation proposals and by the PAYE allowance. Women who stay at home are being treated like a different type of women, he said.
"There's a bad attitude in this Budget where you see people as just units in the taxation system. You see people as economic man and economic woman but there's no such thing as society." It was a "Thatcherite" Budget he said.
