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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Jamie Smyth in Dublin
The Irish government has outlined .2bn of spending cuts in an austerity
budget that aims to cut the country’s sky high deficit and put it back on a
path to economic recovery.
More than half of the expenditure reductions – .15bn – will be made up
through cuts to politically sensitive social welfare, health and education
budgets. A further 50m is being cut from capital expenditure, resulting in
the shelving of a host of flagship infrastructure projects.
Brendan Howlin, minister for public expenditure, said the country had
suffered the greatest economic crisis in living memory and could not pay for
all the services it wanted to provide. But he said the situation had
stabilised and was improving.
“Twelve months ago we were Europe’s problem. Now problems in the European
and global economy threaten our recovery,” he told parliament in his budget
speech on Monday.
A property crash forced Dublin to accept a 7.5bn bail-out from the
European Union and International Monetary Fund in 2010, when its budget
deficit ballooned to 32 per cent of gross domestic product due to the cost
of bailing out its banks. Dublin has already implemented austerity measures
worth 0bn since 2008, and it plans a further 2.4bn between 2012 and 2015
to cut the deficit to 3 per cent of GDP.
The 2012 budget is the first by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition, which
assumed power in March with a promise to restore order to the country’s
public finances.
Mr Howlin announced plans to cut the health budget by 43m, the social
welfare budget by 75m and the education budget by 32.3m. Other measures
include plans to cut the winter fuel allowance for pensioners, cut the
number of assistant teachers for disadvantaged students, and cut lone
parents supports.
The second part of the 2012 budget will be announced on Tuesday by Michael
Noonan, Ireland’s finance minister. He is expected to detail .6bn in tax
increases to bring the total value of the 2012 austerity package to .8bn.
This is 00m more than the government originally indicated due to fears
that weakening tax receipts and a slow down in export growth could threaten
its ability to meet deficit targets.
Under the terms of the EU-IMF bailout Ireland must bring its general
government deficit to 8.6 per cent in 2012, down from about 10.1 per cent in
2011.
A small group of protesters held a demonstration outside the parliament
during the budget speech, criticising the cutbacks and loss of sovereignty
to the EU.
“I took a day off work to protest today. There is a lack of democracy in
all this. The Germans have total control of our budgets,” said Phelim
Wakely, an engineer, who held a placard saying “A Dail of Quislings”. |
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