THE 1997 Estimates "do not signal any weakening of the Government's commitment to fiscal discipline", the Minister for Finance said.

Opening a debate on the Estimates, Mr Quinn said they were "part of an overall budgetary framework which provides for a level of general Government deficit comfortably within the Maastricht guidelines".

The Government's ability to control spending had been curtailed by events beyond its control, including the need for an anti-crime package and the BSE crisis, but concerns expressed about excessive" increases in planned spending in 1997 were overstated. Taking 1996 and 1997 together the increase in gross current spending in real terms would exceed the target of an annual average rate of 2 per cent for those years. But the target should not be taken out of the context in which it was set in the Government programme.

The Government was alert to the dangers of allowing spending to rise too quickly in times of fast economic growth.

On public service pay, he said that if accepted by all parties the new national partnership would provide certainty on pay costs in the public service up to the end of September 2000. The pay agreement would result in a 9.25 per cent increase in pay rates over 39 months, the same as the private sector.

Numbers in the public service had increased by about 600 in 1996 compared with the average increase of 3,700 in the preceding two years. In education there was an increase of 350 and in health 600. An extra 140 gardai had also been provided for. But numbers fell in the Defence Forces because of the voluntary early retirement package and the number of civil servants was down 250.

The strong performance of the economy this year had laid the foundation for continued growth in the years ahead. Growth rates in excess of the EU and OECD average were expected but with some moderation from the exceptional increases of recent years.

The Progressive Democrats spokesman on finance, Mr Michael McDowell, said there seemed to be no pattern of control over public spending and the Government had not achieved any significant tax reform.

He could only hope the Budget would take significant steps towards reform of the income tax code, but the indications were that would not happen and that we would be left with a 48 per cent tax take from people earning less than the average industrial wage.

In a sharp attack on the Government, the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, said its complacency and self-satisfaction over the state of the economy were misplaced. "This Government have done very little either to create or sustain the boom, which started in 1993-4. They simply inherited it, have managed it, and are now in danger of squandering it."

One of the biggest disincentives to employment was that, on virtually any given level of income, workers in the State were paying far more tax than workers in the North or in Britain.

No one was going to be impressed by a once-off give-away election Budget, Mr Ahern said. "For economic reasons, tax reductions should be evenly spread, and not all bunched into an election year."

It should be clear to everyone, he added, that public spending could not continue to rise at the current rate. The 14 per cent increase in the Department of the Taoiseach's administrative overheads, even before increases in pay were added to the figure, was scandalous

There was a 20 per cent rise in the administration costs in Mr Michael Lowry's former Department, and a trebling of expenditure on consultancies. "Perhaps Minister Dukes will do something about this." There was a 17 per cent rise in the administrative costs in the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht.

Civil service numbers had been allowed to rise by 1,000, while Garda numbers had, if anything, dropped. "It is a fair bet that many of the increases in the subheads are for the purpose of making a string of good news announcements around the constituencies in the next few weeks, rather than for tackling genuine high priority social needs."

The Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, said the record of the Government in its first two years in office had been one of outstanding success, particularly in the economic area.

"I will be happy to go before the people on the basis of the record of this Government, and particularly on the basis of what Democratic Left, a relatively small party that will only reach its fifth birthday in March, has been able to achieve."

That was not to deny that the Government had made mistakes, or that there were issues that could, and with the benefit of hindsight, should have been tackled differently. "But where mistakes have been made, the Government has moved speedily to remedy them.

Mr De Rossa said he would respectfully suggest it was time for the media to subject the Progressive Democrats, their record and politics, to the same sort of scrutiny to which all of the parties, including indeed Fianna Fail, were subjected.

The PDs had said in public that they were opposed to the principle of State funding of political parties, while privately canvassing for an increased share of the pot, and it did not merit a comment. Deputy "Hong Kong" Harney had cried crocodile tears for the Dunnes Stores workers while championing the Asian economic model of low pay and low social protection, and it passed without comment.

And the party had produced an economic plan costing over £1 billion, but had been asked no more than cursory questions about what essential services they would cut to finance it.

"Deputy Harney may be the benign, television-friendly face of the PDs, but the ideological steel, as he has shown in and out of government, is provided by Deputy McDowell. A potential cabinet which would have at its ideological core, possibly as Ministers for Finance and Social Welfare, Deputies McCreevy and McDowell, will send a cold shiver of apprehension down the spines of the poorest and weakest sectors of Irish society - the poor, the sick, the elderly, the unemployed."

In its desperation to keep on side with the only party it saw as even remotely capable of propelling it back into government, Deputy Bertie Ahern was engaged with Deputy Harney "in a frantic Riverdance of the Right".