With the day that is in it, I congratulate Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on their first post-election budget. It has been gas to hear a lot of the contributions made about the budget. It is clear that the backroom deal is not about what is best for the people, the economy or services. It is a budget in which Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil dance to each other's tune and see how close they can get.

Sinn Féin should have entered government.

Fair play to Fianna Fáil for staying in the room. For God's sake, will we have to listen to the phrase "we stayed in the room" for the next 20 years?

Perhaps.

Fianna Fáil believes it is just so wonderful for staying in the room with its partners. Nobody has ever been able to tell me the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

The reason is-----

The budget will not end the crisis in health and housing. It will not provide for the end of water charges that are due to be paid in March 2017. It will not end the crisis in homelessness. It will not end the hardship being experienced by tenants or mortgage holders. It will not close the tax loopholes that the partners in government deny are there in the first place and because of which the country has lost billions of euro. It will not address the decades of neglect in rural Ireland in any sense of the word. We have been told that we will get an increase in Leader programme funding, but we have not been reminded that millions of euro have been cut from the current programme. In County Mayo alone as much as €9 million has been cut from it. I am, therefore, extremely interested in the size of the increase in Leader programme funding.

The budget will be wrapped up and sold to the people on the basis that we are being responsible and fair because these are two words of choice.

Obviously, Fine Gael and especially Fianna Fáil have been told to use these two words ad nauseam. I am not sure whether they are getting this advice from their Tory Party advisers or Michael O'Leary these days and find it-----

It is not Slab Murphy.

Is the Senator sure?

Yes.

A couple of things were mentioned that I cannot let pass. Senator James Reilly will be familiar with this from his time in the Department of Health. First, it has been said that what has been introduced today is a budget for auctioneers and developers. I believe it is. It will benefit auctioneers and developers and do nothing to ease the homelessness crisis. When I became a member of Mayo County Council, I could not believe that approximately 52% of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors were auctioneers.

An honourable profession.

They were to be representative of the public. The other issue is home help packages. I heard members of Fianna Fáil saying it was terrible that packages and home help hours were not provided. We know what Fianna Fáil did to the numbers of home help hours and home help packages and how Fine Gael continued the Fianna Fáil approach to health services. The budget is absolutely under-whelming and will do nothing to ease the crisis. It indicates that there is no understanding of how ordinary people are suffering such as people with children who have special needs, patients on hospital trolleys and those who are suffering as a result of the austerity imposed on them.