We are now in the throes of the usual pre-budget scenario - the flying of kites by various Ministers and shadow boxing between coalition partners. There is a sham fight between the Labour Party and Fine Gael while families watch and hope there will be an end to austerity.

Last week various Government Ministers trumpeted the improved Exchequer figures but the key point is that those figures give the opportunity to do the right thing. Citizens have faced repeated austerity budgets, cuts across the board to public services and tax increases. This has happened directly and through various stealth taxes. One cannot discuss recovery without giving families more money in their pockets, which can go back into the domestic economy. We cannot discuss a neutral budget while people are receiving application forms from Irish Water, Uisce Éireann, as we speak. People are wondering whether to give their personal public service, PPS, numbers and various details. How will people afford this extra charge?

The Minister for Finance knows better than most that he has a choice. He can continue to protect those at the top of Irish society or he can take the pressure off families that have been squeezed by these budgets. Will the Minister withdraw the plans for the implementation of water charges and give families a real break in this budget?

I am glad the Deputy acknowledges the improving financial situation and the dramatic growth in GDP figures, which are up by 5.8% in the first six months of the year. I remind the Deputy that in the past three and a half years his party opposed every measure taken to get the country on an even keel.

They opposed every one of them.

The measures that were taken are the reasons the economy is now growing and Sinn Féin opposed every measure. I understand why the Deputy is subdued today. Sinn Féin hoped to build a political movement on the back of misery and failure in the economy but the country is not failing. The country is growing strongly again.

Look at the national debt.

I note that in this morning's newspaper Sinn Féin states that it has another red-line issue. First it was to abolish property tax and now it is to abolish water charges. These are red-line issues but nobody is rushing to join Sinn Féin in government.

Not even Deputy Mattie McGrath.

Where is the queue to join Fine Gael in government?

Sell their souls.

Putting down a red-line issue is like an auld fellow walking up and down the boundaries of the ballroom of romance saying he will not dance with any of those women over there. Nobody wants to dance with him.

Sinn Féin is lonesome.

Nobody wants to dance with him. That is the position.

We are not dancing with the troika. Perhaps the Minister does not realise about the €200 million and the national debt.

Red lines? Is Deputy Mac Lochlainn joking me? If I could comment on Sinn Féin's economic position, it wants to abolish water charges and property tax. Where will it get the €800 million to bring it to the starting point, if it was ever unfortunate enough to be in government? Who will Sinn Féin nail?

Cut your wages for a start.

Who are the rich?

Turn around.

The Minister obviously does not know who the rich are because he has never taxed them.

In Sinn Féin's book a garda married to a teacher is rich.

The Minister is quite capable of looking after himself.

He is indeed.

It is difficult enough to construct budgets, but when one begins by moving back €800 million before one starts, then income tax will get a desperate belt, as will universal social charge and personal incomes. These are the Sinn Féin-----

What about the €700 million pension levy?

Is Deputy Mathews against that also?

The biggest of them all. The Minister forgot about that.

I ask the Minister to ignore the side comments.

I thought Deputy Mathews had more sense. It is not possible to construct a budget on the type of proposals Sinn Féin is making-----

It is.

-----and it needs to start again. Go back to basics. Now that the economy is growing, Sinn Féin needs a new model because what it has stated up to now is absolute economic nonsense.

Hear, hear.

He would be a far better Taoiseach.

Allow Deputy Mac Lochlainn to put a supplementary question.

One would think the Minister was doing stand-up at the Edinburgh fringe festival. Anybody watching today is looking at him and his fellow comedians behind him making light of the reality and sheer distress of so many families who are getting these letters through their doors and making choices and decisions. It is hugely disingenuous of the Minister because he knows that every year we give him detailed costed proposals for the budget with clear alternatives and choices. Every year, understandably, Fine Gael protects the very wealthy in society because that is what it is about.

Rubbish.

What is shocking to people watching today is why the Labour Party continues to facilitate this agenda. This year once again Sinn Féin will provide the Minister with a fully costed budget with alternatives and choices for him to make. There will be no hiding place or stand-up comedy. There will be the reality he must face up to, with the electorate who will have to pay the bills come next January. It is about choices. Will the Minister protect those at the very top as he always has done, as all his language reflects, or will he bring in a genuinely fair and equal budget which starts to take the pressure off families throughout the State? This is his choice and we await his decision.

The Minister might be the auld fellow in the ballroom of romance by the time this is all over.

The House appreciates I am making light of Sinn Féin's pretend economics. That is what I am making light of.

The Minister is deflecting.

To summarise the fully costed three budget submissions Sinn Féin has made to me over the past three and a half years, it decided that 85% of the correction in the finances of the country should be made by way of tax increases-----

What are water and property charges?

-----and the total proposal of its tax increases was more than €7 billion. If Sinn Féin thinks the country can take an extra burden of €7 billion in taxation, whether it is the well off, those on middle incomes or the poor who must pay it-----

What about corporates?

-----it is absolute nonsense. This is what I am illustrating today. I am making light of the so-called economic proposals Sinn Féin is bringing forward. I can understand why it took its stance against the policies we pursued, which were dubbed as austerity policies, but now that it has been proved they have been successful-----

It has not been successful. Real people are suffering.

Successful for whom? For the homeless?

-----and that the economy is growing dramatically, if Sinn Féin wants to be a serious force in the Parliament, it should at least get background people who understand economics and who can add.

The Minister's Department. The Department of Finance.

What about corporate taxation?

Is Deputy Mathews sitting out this dance?

I ask Deputy Durkan to respect Deputy Collins, who is on her feet.