The Opposition parties yesterday attacked the Government's Estimates package, claiming it represented an election spending splurge and lacked emphasis on quality of public spending.
Fine Gael said that while current spending had increased by more than £5 billion since the Government came into office the public services, particularly health, had deteriorated.
The party's finance spokesman, Mr Michael Noonan, said: "The quality of public spending is now more important than the quantity. Pouring money into the same failed structure will not deliver the level and quality of services that the citizens of this Republic are entitled to".
He said industrial disputes were "closing down significant public services and the Government fails to get a grip. The country is on the verge of a public pay explosion and the Government has no counterstrategy."
The estimate for capital expenditure is no longer a good measure of improvement in infra structure, Mr Noonan said. "A proportion of the money voted is not being spent because of blockages in design, planning, tendering and allocation of contracts.
"Much of the additional money voted is being consumed by the huge increases in contract prices for public works. The use of public-private partnerships is still Government policy, but this policy is not being implemented."
The Labour Party spokesman on finance, Mr Derek McDowell, said the Estimates made a mockery of the Minister for Finance's political career and the Government's criticisms of Labour's call for spending increases.
The Estimates represented an election splurge by a Government desperate to redeem itself in the eyes of the electorate.
"The increase in spending, interestingly enough, is close enough to my party's estimate of what was necessary, despite fevered Government attacks on our plans," said Mr McDowell.
When the Government launched the National Development Plan it had committed itself to ironing out bottlenecks in the way of its implementation.
"The failure to spend the full capital allocation this year, itself an adequate allowance, in the face of substantial overruns elsewhere, is worrying indeed.
"The Government is clearly going to have problems delivering the National Development Plan and probably on today's increased expenditure. They will clearly not meet the Government's interim target on development aid reasserted recently by the Taoiseach in New York."
Mr McDowell also called for a change in the nature of the Estimates process. He said the public had been informed of substantial increases in spending without any real debate as to where priorities lay.
"Labour have recently proposed a transparent and accountable budgetary process. The Government are opposed. Given the humiliation heaped on Minister McCreevy today it is not difficult to understand why," he said.