'Fierce pressure' from builders - Ahern

THE GOVERNMENT should have abolished property-based tax incentives earlier but faced “fierce pressure” from developers and politicians not to do so, according to former taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

Mr Ahern said he agreed with everything in the speech by Taoiseach Brian Cowen at Dublin City University on Thursday night.

Asked about it at the launch of the Lansdowne Road Aviva stadium in Dublin yesterday, he said: “Even the self-criticisms in it I accept also, which was mainly the tax incentives. We probably should have closed those down a good bit earlier, but there were always fierce pressures, there was endless pressures to keep them. There was endless pressures to extend them.”

Asked who exerted the pressure, Mr Ahern said: “Developers, owners of sites, areas that didn’t have the developments, community councils, politicians, civic society – they were forever at us . . .

“They’d be coming to see him, deputations right across, and that’s part I suppose of democratic politics. That delayed him down.”

He was delighted Mr Cowen had “set out the record”. There was “collective responsibility”. No one from an agency or government department had ever raised as an issue or mentioned as a concern the capitalisation of banks.

Mr Ahern also suggested Mr Cowen should communicate more. “I think the fact that he’s engaged like that, I think that’s good. I really support that and from my point of view, the more of it the better.”