The Minister for Finance has been accused by the Opposition parties of delivering handsomely to the better-off, but turning a blind eye to the poor. The Budget's benefits to the well-paid, compared to the worse-off, were identified by Opposition politicians in Leinster House as the central weakness in the Minister's speech. Describing it as "a rich man's Budget", a "kickback" to the rich, and a prescription for assisting the wealthy, Opposition parties united in condemning the Budget as a lost opportunity to spread the benefits of the Celtic Tiger.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Michael Noonan, said the Budget was "studded with short-term expediency" at the expense of medium-term strategies. It dispensed money like a "scatter gun", he said. The Minister must maintain confidence and would do so if he was prudent, in control of public spending and with clear medium-term objectives, Mr Noonan said. He said Mr McCreevy had failed to do this - he was spending too much; his tax package was inadequate, unjust and ineffective as an instrument of policy; and his social welfare measures were paltry. The Labour party leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, claimed Mr McCreevy had squandered a historic economic surplus, and his chance to spread the benefits of the Celtic Tiger among all Irish people. The Budget, he said, demonstrated the "clear ideological gulf across Leinster House". "The super-rich don't even need to work any more. They can sit back and decide to play the property market or the stock market and pay Capital Gains Tax at 20 per cent after inflation. Little wonder that ordinary people are being out-gunned in the property market," Mr Quinn said.
Labour's new finance spokesman, Mr Derek McDowell, said that for those earning twice the average wage, this was a very good Budget. For those on £50,000, it was indeed a good Budget - but for the majority of people, it was bad, unfair, divisive and inequitable, he said.
It was also reckless and irresponsible, pointing to a government that was prepared to risk social partnership, and uncaring of the socially excluded.
As far as the Democratic Left leader, Mr De Rossa, was concerned, the Budget had failed miserably to deliver to the poor and to those who could not work. The very well-off would get 10 times more from the Budget than the badly paid and those dependent on social welfare, he said.
Democratic Left's finance spokesman, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said that if one was in the high earning bracket and concerned with Capital Gains Tax, this was not just payback time, "but kickback time". He said £315 million of the tax package was "frittered away" in rate reductions to mollify the Progressive Democrats and their high-earner supporters, and contrasted this with a single earner on £10,000 "working as a barman near the Four Courts" who, he said, would gain £4.50 a week.
The Green Party said Mr McCreevy had blown "only hot air" in relation to environmental issues. Fiscal green measures had hardly featured, according to the Dublin South East TD, Mr John Gormley, who also described it as "a Budget for the rich". The chairman of the PD parliamentary party, Senator Jim Gibbons, meanwhile, said the Budget "proves the true extent of the Progressive Democrats' role in this Government".