Appointed to finance in 1966 in a government led by Sean Lemass, Haughey felt his greatest expertise lay in finance and quickly set about enacting an imaginative and creative set of budgets, starting in April 1967. In his first budget he combined increases in the duty on alcohol, tobacco and petrol with relatively cheap but politically effective schemes for the elderly. He announced that old-age pensioners would enjoy free travel during off-peak hours, throughout the State, and granted 200 free units of electricity every two months to senior citizens. He also increased spending on local authority housing, with a quarter of the total allocation used on the Ballymun project.