POLITICAL REACTION:LABOUR LEADER Eamon Gilmore and his Green Party counterpart, Minister for the Environment John Gormley, have clashed over the asset management agency announced in the Budget.
Expressing surprise that the Greens supported the proposal, Mr Gilmore told reporters the agency was being established “effectively to buy up the properties that were speculated on over the years of the boom”.
“It’s bad enough that we have to bail out the banks and property speculation in Ireland, but I don’t understand why this bailout of property speculation is extending to the properties that these speculators bought in Dubai and Spain and the United Kingdom,” the Labour leader said.
Defending his party, Mr Gormley responded: “The best possible advice coming from the National Treasury Management Agency , the people that advised the Government in relation to this, [was that] if you want a properly functioning banking system, this is the way you have to do it. Unpalatable as it may seem, the fact is that we have to pursue that particular path. It is not a case of letting people off the hook; this is, if you like, a debt collection agency. People will be pursued for the money that they owe,” Mr Gormley said.
Mr Gilmore also criticised the omission of any reference to tax exiles in the Budget speech: “It’s the same old story, the golden circle, the gilded elite, will always be protected by Fianna Fáil.”
On political reform, Mr Gormley noted he had called for changes in a speech in Drogheda earlier this year: “We now see that the whole question of the pensions has been sorted out, the pensions for sitting TDs who have been ministers; also the question of the Junior Ministers and a whole series of other issues too, which we raised back in January.”
Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton told reporters: “I expected that this would be a reforming Budget, because if you cannot address the issues of reform at a time of crisis, when will you ever do it?
“But they have put off confronting the high cost of running government, that is core. We have to reduce that, so we can take the boot off the neck of families [and] create space for job promotion, and they [the Government] haven’t done that.”
On the cuts in Oireachtas pay and pensions, he said: “That’s reducing the cost of politics and I’ve no problem with that. But the truth is, that is small beer when it comes to the €60 billion cost of keeping this country going, and you can’t keep a €60 billion cost going with taxes of €34 billion.
“So what the Minister is doing is, instead of cutting back the cost of running government, he wants families to stump up,” he said.
Sinn Féin economics spokesman Arthur Morgan said there was “no justice” in the Budget. “The get-out-of-jail clause given to the banks after years of reckless property lending leaves the taxpayer saddled with a €90 billion debt. They are nationalising debt and privatising profit. But the Government ignore those struggling to survive,” he said.
