Fine Gael reaction: Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton accused the Government of "screwing families" who were finding it hard to get by, as he sharply attacked the Budget.

"We did not need Eddie Hobbs to tell us the reality," he said. Even in a €40 fill of petrol, the Government's tax take is €25.

The question was: why had the Government asked every household in the country to pay nearly €4,000 a year in extra taxation? Why had it only been able to give €20 a week back to people paying that sort of money in extra taxation?

Addressing the Government benches, he said: "You have become soft and comfortable. You do not heed waste, public spending and value for money and that is what has resulted in people having to pay these huge sums."

Mr Cowen had said he would reduce by €20 a week the amount people had to pay in tax, which was the sum total of his boast, but compared to this time last year, the Minister would be collecting €3,750 more from every household in the country.

While it was true that the Minister had taken some people on the minimum wage out of the tax net by raising the threshold, by April of next year they would all be back in again.

Mr Bruton said that the people had lost trust in the Government.

"Giving them back their own money is not going to change things. Families are fed up with being treated as a soft touch by this Government to paper over every crack and fund vanity projects of different Ministers."

In its courtship of the voter, the Government had used a time-worn ploy, which was that some suitors go for a person with a past. Some suitors went for a person with a future, but every suitor went for a person with a present.

"And that is what we have today, presents carefully gift-wrapped with something for everybody in the audience. But look beneath them and you will see this is a sham. The Government is trying to get people to forget a past full of disappointment and waste."

The Government was trying to do this with the taxpayers' own money.

Mr Bruton claimed that the Government had one eye on the next general election in framing the Budget.

It marked the first step in buying the next election with the people's own money.

The Government deserved no credit for closing off some tax reliefs, he said, adding that the wealthy would simply move their money to profit from the tax reliefs still remaining.

Families would need to have a pretax income of €300 a week before they could benefit from the childcare provisions. Meanwhile, the amount allocated to support independent living by the elderly was less than the money wasted on the PPARS health computer system.