THE Fine Gael tax package was dismissed as "flimsy and short on detail" by the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, who said the party had failed to set a fixed rate of expenditure for the next five years.
Fundamental to reducing tax was controlling expenditure and eliminating borrowing, said Fianna Fail's spokesman on finance, Mr Charlie McCreevy. But the Government projected to borrow an additional £2.2 billion over the next three years in the budget. Fine Gael now promised to eliminate borrowing for current and capital purposes and it was "very doubtful" if the Labour Party or Democratic Left would underwrite this.
After all the rhetoric about concentrating tax changes on the lower paid, Fine Gael had no proposals to bower the standard rate to 20 per cent, or to bring in an introductory rate, Mr McCreevy said, and the party proposed to reduce the top rate to 45 per cent.
The Progressive Democrats spokesman on finance, Mr Michael McDowell, said Fine Gael had no credibility on the issue of tax reform because, in three budgets, the income tax rates had been reduced by only 1 per cent.
Fine Gael's proposals did not address the real problems of our punitive, antiwork, tax system, Mr McDowell said. The benefit to a worker earning £250 a week would only be £1.44, less than the price of a pint.