Opposition renews attacks on Budget 2000

Opposition parties have renewed their attacks on last month's Budget, after revelations that some of its controversial tax proposals were opposed by senior government advisers. The Fine Gael finance spokesman, Michael Noonan, has said the Taoiseach is "seriously compromised" by the revelations that some of the controversial tax proposals in last month's budget were opposed by senior government advisers. The Labour Party's finance spokesman, Derek McDowell, said that the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, had acted contrary to Government policy.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Minister for Finance decided to ignore senior civil servant warnings about problems associated with his budget measure to individualise the taxation system. The documents obtained by the Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act describe individualisation as being at variance with Government policy.

The Tax Strategy Group consists of extremely senior civil servants and advisors to Ministers. As early as 5 October, they were warning that individualisation was not a priority because of the fundamental constitutional issues involved. The Group also believed that it would be difficult to generate public consensus on the issue. This warning is at variance with Charlie McCreevy's protestation in the wake of the row that followed that he had no idea his proposals would be so controversial.

The Tax Strategy Group looked at various options to fund tax cuts. The option that the Minister eventually took was individualisation, but the Group felt that resources would not be targeted towards families with children and, as such, this would be at variance with Government policy, which was to refocus tax and social welfare in favour of the family unit.