I call Deputy Higgins.

Her Majesty's bounty

Deputy Mattie McGrath should not fall into the septic tank.

I am sure all those people out there today suffering and looking forward to the savage cuts will be very impressed looking in here this afternoon.

Does the Taoiseach accept that at the heart of the political establishment in this State, there is a monumental hypocrisy? When the same cuts in child benefit and in other areas that were delivered and promised yesterday were delivered last year by Fianna Fáil, they were greeted with shrieks of opposition from the main Fine Gael and Labour Party spokesmen, shrieks that would put a swarm of vuvuzelas to silence and yet they are the very people recommending them this year.

I watched the Taoiseach's so called state of the nation address and read it again and again.

That is great, good man.

I wondered what it was all for when he repeated merely the platitudes of nine months ago. When he said the Government would do all it can to protect the most vulnerable, our children, the sick and the elderly, can I ask him to agree he is guilty of the most monumental hypocrisy since yesterday the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform attacked the children, the sick and the elderly in many forms? I ask him to acknowledge that he did not make the difficult choices, as he claimed, but continued to obey the diktats of the sharks in the financial markets, orchestrated by Merkel and Sarkozy, that working and poor people must pay for the financial crisis of the European banking system.

Is the Taoiseach aware that there are substantial assets and wealth held by the very richest in this society that are absolutely untouched by this Government? Does he know the Central Statistics Office in a survey totalled the net financial and other assets for 2010 in this State at €468 billion after liabilities and debt, and that Credit Suisse, the multinational financial services company, estimated the wealthiest 5% in this State owned 46% of those assets, giving them €219 billion net of loans? When a 5% tax on that would yield €10 billion, why does the Taoiseach not look in that direction and take from those who would not even feel it rather than feeling free to hit the disabled, the children, the sick and the elderly?

I am glad the Deputy read my state of the nation address three times —repetitio mater studiorum est as they used to say.

And now the nation is a state.

The position is that the Deputy forgot to mention the fact that I did say in that state of the nation address that I would like to be able to tell everybody that they were going to be unaffected by the budget but I could not do that. At least someone had the honesty to stand up and tell it as it was.

The Taoiseach could not do that in February.

Deputy Higgins does not have proprietary rights on access to people who are suffering in this country. We meet this every day of the week and, as I said earlier, choices are always unpalatable.

The Taoiseach should listen to them when he meets them.

It would be very easy to do a budget eight or ten years ago when the question was how much money was wanted and how much could be spent before the end of the year. It is a hell of a different prospect when we have to make choices to get the country back on track and no one is going to do it but ourselves. The question of the European issue is one we will be discussing later on.

I make a point about the assets the Deputy says of wealthy people that are untouched. Yesterday we had the announcement by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in respect of current spending. After we conclude this business, the Minister for Finance will bring in his taxation measures and I advise the Deputy to wait for that. I make the point, however, that he might refer his analysis from Credit Suisse and whoever else to the Economic Fiscal Council here, which is completely independent, for its observations on those statistics. Deputy Higgins should remember that we are at the start of a four year programme to remove the country from the bailout, to close the enormous hole in the public finances and to provide an opportunity for us to change the structures of government in order that the people can have an opportunity to have a job, a career, an opportunity to move on in their lives and contribute to their country and the economy. That is what this is about. If the Deputy thinks we can just sail on regardless of the position in which we find ourselves, he is obviously not reading enough speeches.

I never said we should carry on regardless. In fact, I asked for a major change of policy. The Taoiseach will not bring the country out of the depths into which it has been plunged by this crazed system in four years. Austerity will make matters far worse. Surely he should have learned this from the plight and suffering of the Greek people. He did not answer the question. Why does he leave untouched, for example, the €219 billion of net assets and wealth held by the top 5% — the very wealthiest — in the State? Why does he not look there? Why does he not look at the top 5% of income earners, the wealthiest of whom would have take-home pay of more than €400,000 each a year? The Government attacks young disabled people——

Does the Deputy have a question?

——and parents with three and four children. It attacks the weakest in society because it has made a political choice that the wealthy who back Fine Gael will not be touched.

A question, please.

Instead it takes the easy option of attacking the poor and working people. Does the Taoiseach agree that is to the shame of the Government and the Labour Party? Does he agree that critically the investment needed——

Thank you, Deputy.

——to create the jobs which he said was the priority in his address will not come from current circumstances? The extra wealth in society needs to be used to create tens of thousands of jobs and remake this broken society.

I have often said it is not possible to bring a country to a point where it can have economic prosperity by austerity alone. The Deputy knows as well as everybody else that the problem of the country being €16 billion out of line will not be rectified or fixed by somebody else, it must be done by ourselves alone. That means striking a balance between current spending cuts, taxation measures and the injection of an impetus into the economy to create jobs, which represents the key to solving the problem.

The Government has indicated that there will be no increases in income tax and we will honour that commitment. The Deputy does not seem to realise that while the top 5% pay 50% of income tax, if the Government continued to increase income tax at the higher levels, we would drive away the people who create jobs, invest in the country and put people to work.

They are not putting people to work.

I advise the Deputy to wait until he hears——

Where is the evidence that they are putting people to work?

——the statement of the Minister for Finance on taxation measures and how the Government has decided to create an impetus in the area of employment for small and medium-sized firms which will take people off the live register and put them into the world of work. On the live register figures recently produced, the Minister for Social Protection has pointed out that up to October 125,000 people had been moved off the register.

They left the country.

Unfortunately, they were replaced by others. The point is that this shows there is a great deal of activity in the labour market. When the Government focuses on changing the structures——

The Taoiseach is deluded.

——and cutting out waste in governance, we can develop the indigenous economy by restoring confidence.

What is the Taoiseach talking about?

The Deputy should remember we have had a bailout——

Yes, the Government is bailing out European speculators.

——and that we are not the masters of our own destiny as we would like to be. Until we get to the point where we are in control of our economic sovereignty and independence, we cannot do all the things we would like to do, but we are making preparations and are at the start of a four year strategy and programme.