MICHAEL NOONAN AND Brendan Howlin have been criticised by Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin for failing to remain in the Dáil chamber after they delivered their Budget 2015 speeches to listen to replies from opposition spokespersons.
The Finance Minister and the Public Expenditure and Reform Minister were both absent from the chamber yesterday evening as Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin delivered their response to the Budget.
The pair undertook a series of media interviews including with TheJournal.ie and this afternoon in the Dáil, Martin criticised the two ministers.
He claimed that they had found time to tweet about their ties and record videos for the government’s in-house news service, MerrionStreet.ie, but not listen to the opposition.
“Yesterday Ministers Noonan and Howlin found the time to put out scripted political videos and tweet their selection of ties, but they became the first ever ministers to deliver a budget and not have the basic courtesy to listen to the replies of opposition speakers,” he said.
Martin’s criticism was part of a wide-ranging speech in which he slammed yesterday’s announcement which he said was a “cynical, short-term and political budget”.
He criticised the way in which the measures announced had leaked into the public domain in the days leading up to the Budget saying the the “dominance of media management” in the presentation of the Budget “has gone beyond the ridiculous”.
“Through most of this year the ‘relief is on the way’ headlines have appeared on an almost weekly basis – adding ‘exclusive’ to the list of words devalued by this government,” he said.
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