The Opposition said last night that the Department of Finance's Economic Review and Outlook provided further evidence that the Government misled voters about the state of the public finances in advance of the election.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, said the very small reduction in forecast growth did not explain "the huge overruns in spending so far in 2002 and the enormous shortfall in revenue".
He said the public were "conned into believing that the Budget presented earlier in the year was built on solid foundations. Promises about spending cutbacks have been broken left, right and centre since the election, yet the Minister is now bemoaning the build-up of high expectations, which his own Government - more than anyone else - sought to promote."
He accused Mr McCreevy of "wringing his hands about price inflation running at twice the rate of the rest of Europe but offering no policies to tackle the problem".
He said the Minister admitted in the report that the Government surplus had collapsed from a forecast of 4.3 per cent in 2001 to a current prediction of 0.1 per cent in 2002. However, few believed this represented the true picture for 2002.
For the Labour Party, Mr Pat Rabbitte said the publication of the annual economic review and outlook by the Department of Finance showed the Minister had got all of his major predictions wrong.
He said, given that the Minister had made no changes to his Budget-day forecasts despite the worsening economic situation, there would be more cutbacks this year.
"In addition to deliberately deceiving the public about the state of the public finances in advance of the General Election, it is clear from these figures released today that all his major predictions about the economy have been wrong," said Mr Rabbitte.
He said that, since Budget day, inflation had risen, growth had fallen and "Budget-day surpluses heralded by the Minister have disappeared - even when all the Minister's sleights of hand and funny money accounting are taken into account".
He said Mr McCreevy had inherited a boom and "pumped it further". Now, when times were more difficult, the Minister should be investing in future needs. In not doing so sufficiently, he was undermining the National Development Plan and future economic competitiveness, Mr Rabbitte maintained.
