Hello, Thanks for clicking my new website. Many people have suffered huge losses due to bad government – lost their jobs, lost their savings, lost their homes. We must now make the future of our families secure again. To do that, we need to transform the way we do things in Ireland. We are pledged [...]
The top priority for a new Fine Gael government is to get people back to work and stop forced emigration. Young people have been the main victims of the economic crisis. Two out of every three people pushed out of work are under the age of 30. We are losing our youth to emigration. Fine [...]
New Politics New politics can put the interest of the citizen back at the centre of government. • Abolish severance payments for Ministers • Abolish the entitlement of Ministers to state cars • Cap app political pensions, only payable at 65 • Cut the pay of Taoiseach and Ministers • Require all expenses to be [...]
Fair Care – Making our Health Services Work Even with resources scarce, we can still focus on fairness. The acid test is how we help families cope with crises in their lives. FairCare is our fundamental reorganisation of the Irish health system based on three fundamental principles: Treat all patients equally: ending the distinction between [...]
Smaller, Smarter Government We need a smaller government that is effective and fair. Talented people in our public service are trapped in a system that fails them. We must break up the rigid structures and harness that talent. It is those who depend on public services who are the victims of waste. • Revolutionise the [...]
Fix the Public Finances We must cut our cloth to what taxpayers can afford. Piling on more and more new taxes won’t work. By cutting waste and inefficiency we can protect frontline services. • Focus on world-class efficiency in spending so income taxes don’t rise. • Streamline administration – eliminate and streamline up to 145 [...]
Diseased ArteriesA rash of recent books has revealed what lay behind the banking crash: appalling practices, regulatory ineptitude, cosy connections, political delusion and alarming complacency. However, it has not been just the financial arteries of our society which have suffered in this way. Continue Reading
For an Opposition Spokesman on Finance, preparing for the Budget is a bit like planning for a card game. You can think about possible plays, but you really don’t know whether they are workable until the cards are dealt. The big mistake is to carefully prepare a speech with a beginning, middle and end, because if the Budget throws up surprises you can’t integrate them into your story. It is much better to prepare a series of ‘episodes’ that are each self-contained and can be switched around to match the needs of the occasion. Continue Reading
SPEECH GIVEN BY DEPUTY RICHARD BRUTON TD
At IICM Awards
A high performance public service is central to all our ambitions for this country. Its reputation has been damaged in recent years. High-profile white elephants, promises unfulfilled, ambitious strategies that ended in failure, chaos in the public finances, poor use of technology, disastrous weakness of regulation – all have sapped public confidence and demoralised talented people who have committed their lives to the public service. Continue Reading
