Fianna Fail is now radical on behalf of people who have far too much, where once they were radical on behalf of those with little, the Fine Gael leader claimed in the Dail.

Mr John Bruton said that "Fianna Fail stands for those who are already well off. The Budget drawn up by `K Club Charlie' represents the values of the K Club - privilege, congratulating oneself on one's golf handicap, the number of times one is able to take a holiday each year and the turbo-charged power of one's fourth motor car. Those thrusting, profit-seeking values have colonised Fianna Fail."

During the Budget debate which centred on the controversy surrounding single-income families, Mr Bruton said the Government had shown "such political incompetence" that it made women, those who are already at home or those who would like the option to look after their children at home - feel trapped and undervalued. "It has also succeeded in aggravating the largest trade union in the country by the mean-minded manner in which it has treated the low paid."

The Minister for Sport, Dr McDaid, intervened and echoed a point made by the Taoiseach - that Fine Gael proposed to introduce an earned income tax credit which would produce tax reductions at different levels of income for single, married single -income and married double-income taxpayers.

He said that under the proposed Fine Gael system a married couple with two earners would save substantially more tax than a couple with one income. "Is it the Fine Gael party's intention to change its economic policy document?" Dr McDaid asked.

Mr Bruton said, however, that Fine Gael's proposal for an increase in the PAYE allowance would confer a benefit of about £572 on a family in a double income situation whereas the Government's changes would create a discrimination of £6,000 between double and single income families. "That is 10 times the difference," he said.

He added that there was no way it could be said the social partners participating in the national pay talks represented men and women working in the home on an unpaid basis. It was also false for the Taoiseach to say that members of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats represented them. He said that in the last election Fianna Fail proposed it would tilt the tax balance in the opposite direction to what the Budget was now doing.

The introduction of individualisation into the tax system was a "profound change by any standard".

It was so profound a change that people deserved to be consulted about it, he added.

Mr Ruairi Quinn, the Labour Party leader, said the "country is up in arms" at the manner in which the Government "bung led" the greatest financial opportunity this century.

What was frightening he said was that "this was not a mistake. Deputy McCreevy did not make a gaff. He believes this kind of distortion and that is why we are so opposed to this Budget."

If the Budget went through in its current form, "there are many people whose income will not be substantially affected at a time when they could have expected a substantial alteration".

The bottom 10 per cent of the population got an increase of 0.7 per cent while the top 30 per cent who needed it least got between 3 and 4 per cent of what they already had.

The Minister of State for Tourism, Mr Chris Flood, sharply criticised RTE's coverage of the Budget as an "hysterical rant" against the Budget, which made the Opposition appear almost pro-Budget he said.

The station's coverage was "outside its remit of objective and impartial reporting and analysis," he said. The Opposition was doing its job in attacking the Budget but "some RTE employees were not".

He said elements of the Budget were controversial but his concerns about some of the RTE coverage were not about that. He was "bitterly disappointed" at the way some of RTE's coverage veered "to the highly individualist rather than the impartial".

Defending the Budget, the Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Bobby Molloy, said he was proud that the Progressive Democrats had made an input "into taking the burden of the tax off the workers of this country like never before".

He said they had to seek to "balance" the needs of spouses in the home and those outside, and this was only the third of five budgets.