ANALYSIS:Failure to criticise FF or the Greens is most remarkable aspect of Opposition in-fighting
OVER THE past two days, the criticisms Fine Gael and Labour have made of each other’s policies have been more reminiscent of government and opposition parties attacking each other than the slightly gentler deportment that might be expected of potential coalition partners.
What has been more extraordinary has been the near absence of criticism made by either party against Fianna Fáil or the Green Party. It is as if the former coalition partners became bystanders in this phase of the campaign. Both main Opposition parties had cursory swipes at Micheál Martin’s flip-flop over his ministerial severance pay yesterday, but other than that it was a relatively flak-free day for Fianna Fáil.
The trigger for the latest altercation between the parties came on Thursday when Fine Gael’s finance spokesman Michael Noonan claimed Labour was becoming a “seriously high-tax party”. To add insult to injury, he also contended Fine Gael would have a balanced budget by 2016 whereas Labour would hardly have gone beyond the first hurdle.
Yesterday, Labour responded in kind. Launching its manifesto, Eamon Gilmore devoted a large swathe of the news conference afterwards to a dissection of Fine Gael fiscal policies.
He implied that a Fine Gael government would involve no more than a change of one conservative party for another. He then described Noonan’s portrayal of Labour as a high-tax party as “old-fashioned, out of date and wrong”, before launching into a broadside on Fine Gael’s fiscal programme.
Gilmore said Fine Gael’s €16 billion economic package had a “big black hole” of over €8 billion and that its growth projections were based on projections published by the Economic and Social Research Institute in the middle of last year, which no longer bore any relation to reality.
Gilmore then accused Fine Gael of including the kind of taxes the party had campaigned so vigorously against between 2002 and 2007 – stealth taxes. These, Gilmore contended, included a further €21 deduction each month in child benefit for a family with two children, new car taxes, water charges, social welfare cuts and an attack on old-age pensioners by increasing the rate of DIRT tax.
The stridency of the criticism between the parties that will likely form the next government has been surprising and probably reflects electoral tensions. Strategists from both parties have become anxious about the relative electoral strengths.
Some in Labour believe Michael Noonan has got a relatively soft ride from the media following his strong performance in the budget. They point to his alleged flip-flop over Brian Lenihan’s decision to postpone the injection of funds into Irish banks and also to an interview he gave to Bloomberg last October when he said there was little point in negotiating changes with bondholders.
The party’s 89-page manifesto played second fiddle to the spat. It contained 100 steps to help the country and economy recover. But most are already in the public domain, including its banking and economic policies, its plan for a strategic bank, its plans to replace Fás and the creation of a trade tsar. The most novel proposal was the plan to hold a referendum on the introduction of same-sex marriage in Ireland.
The kernel of the manifesto is, unsurprisingly, banking and finance. Gilmore gave more detail yesterday on the extent to which Labour is prepared to go to renegotiate the IMF-EU deal, to lower the interest rate and to make bondholders share in losses.
The party was careful to state that it will seek renegotiation of only the EU portion of the IMF-EU deal. That reflects the realpolitik as the interest rate imposed by the IMF is immutable.
Gilmore said Labour would seek a 3 per cent reduction in the circa 6 per cent rate. He would not specify the percentage of a haircut Labour wanted bondholders to take, but said it would make up a share of a €2 billion reduction Labour want in the €9 billion adjustments imposed by the IMF-EU on the State between now and 2014.
