Bruton has 'no ambitions' for Áras

FORMER TAOISEACH John Bruton said yesterday the presidency was “an office that no citizen ought to refuse to consider” but insisted he had “no ambitions in that direction”.

Asked if he intended to be a candidate in the upcoming election, Mr Bruton, who is a vice-president of the Fine Gael party, said he had already answered that question.

“I said something like I’ve no ambitions in that direction and something like of course it’s an office that no citizen ought to refuse to consider, but I have no ambitions in that direction.”

Fine Gael MEP Mairéad McGuinness has announced she will seek the party’s nomination for the presidency later this year.

Former European Parliament president Pat Cox has indicated he has not ruled out running for the presidency, while another Fine Gael MEP, Seán Kelly, has also considered the matter.

Speaking at a Distinct Business Consulting event in Dublin yesterday, Mr Bruton also said an EU presidential election should take place.

The people of Europe should select a president of the commission, he argued, “instead of 27 prime ministers meeting quietly and picking one of their own”.

Mr Bruton rejected the need for what he described as an Irish “gesture” on the 12.5 per cent corporation tax. He said Ireland’s corporation tax policy predated the formation of the European Union: “I would just say to the president of France that the Irish low corporation tax rate is older than he is.”

It had been a fruitful tax policy, raising 2.9 per cent of gross domestic product, which compared favourably to other European member states. “Why would any banker, and the European Union is our banker at the moment, want one of its customers to basically, as a condition for extending the loan to them or reducing the interest rate, to destroy the means whereby the money is to be repaid?”

Mr Bruton also claimed a common consolidated European tax base did not make sense.