2012 SPENDING SHOWS LABOUR IN GOVT TAKING TOUGH DECISIONS - HUMPHREYS
Issued : Monday 5 December, 2011
Cllr Richard Humphreys, the Labour Party Councillor for the Stillorgan Ward, has welcomed the expenditure figures announced by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin in the Dáil on Monday 5 December.
“Minister Brendan Howlin’s announcement shows that the Labour Party with our partners in Government Fine Gael are taking the tough but necessary decisions to restore our sovereignty and fix our broken economy.” Humphreys said. “I am glad that in doing so, the Labour Party has protected the most vulnerable sectors within available resources.”
“It is very positive to see that the Labour Party has strongly influenced the direction of this year’s Budget. The cuts outlined today are €300m less than would have been the case in the last administration’s four year plan and crucially the most vulnerable in society have been protected. There will be no change to weekly social welfare rates and the Government will continue to provide for children with special needs. The mental health budget has been ringfenced.”
“The Government has committed to creating new jobs, through a new €20m activation fund which will target the long term unemployed.”
“Fianna Fail’s criticisms of the budget can be dismissed as they have zero credibility on the economy, having created this crisis in the first place. But the criticisms of the Ultra-Left Alliance are particularly absurd.”
“The People Before Profit’s Ultra-Left response to the budget has been to complain about austerity and to argue that the Government should repudiate the debt and tax the super-wealthy. This is quite simply undergraduate politics gone mad. Even leaving aside the question of Ireland’s legal obligations to repay its debt, the immediate result of a repudiation of debt would be a halt to any further funding from the troika. This would result in the Government being unable to fund a huge range of public services, giving rise to a series of immediate and savage austerity measures that would make the 2012 cuts look like a picnic.” Humphreys said.
“As for the concept of taxing the super-rich, this Government is fundamentally committed to equity in the tax system, but it is either a fraud or a delusion to assert that there is a magic pot of gold out there that will balance the books, if only the Government would tax the shadowy elite. This caricature is being dreamed up by political Pied Pipers, who are trying to lead some of the Irish people down the path of false solutions. I believe that the Irish people are intelligent and astute enough to acknowledge the reality, the scale of the crisis and the fact that this Government are tackling it firmly” Humphreys said.
“The scale of the disaster inherited by Fine Gael and Labour from the outgoing Fianna Fail-Green administration is enormous” Humphreys said. “As the Taoiseach pointed out in his address to the nation, the State is spending EUR 16 Billion more than it receives every year. Any country that keeps up that rate of overspend is going to go bust.”
“There is no magical source of money that will make up that gap, no goose to lay golden eggs that will pay our way out of this mess. As a country we are unable to control our own economic destiny because no-body will lend us money apart from the IMF/EU/ECB troika. We are therefore obliged to comply with the troika’s fiscal requirements. To claw our way back to economic sovereignty we need to reduce the overspend very severely. To do so is of course tough but it is necessary.”
Ends
Cllr 
