THE GREEN Party has ruled out the option of pension cuts as part of the €6 billion budget adjustment for next year.
Opposition to pension cuts had been expressed at Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meetings over the past two weeks, and last night Green Party Minister of State Mary White expressed her party’s opposition to a move on pensions.
She said suggestions that pensioners could bear cuts were insulting and inaccurate.
“We also know that people who now depend upon pensions are of a generation which made many sacrifices for their families and the country,” said Ms White, who is Minister with responsibility for equality.
“I know that many hard-pressed families are also fretful about the prospect of cuts in pensions for their elderly relatives.”
The Minister said the Greens would continue to work with their coalition partners to ensure that those least able to bear the strain were most protected.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the Government would make decisions based on what was right for the country and what it could afford, when asked whether he would discourage his backbenchers from making appeals not to cut the old-age pension. He was speaking in Glenties, Co Donegal last night following the selection of Brian Ó Domhnaill as the party’s candidate for Donegal South West.
“I’m not getting involved in any discussion. We’ve a democracy in this country. Government is looking at all of the issues. No final decisions have been taken. That’s part of a process of engagement that we have at our parliamentary party all the time,” he said.
Fianna Fáil Minister of State Conor Lenihan also spoke last night of protecting pensioners in the context of the budget.
"Everything is being looked at, but I would reassure people that in fact the Government will try to protect, to the utmost, vulnerable people in our society, and particularly vulnerable older people," he said on RTÉ's The Week in Politics.
The Cabinet discussed the budget for 3½ hours yesterday before the arrival in Dublin today of EU economic commissioner Olli Rehn.
Hopes that the Opposition might facilitate the passage of the budget were scotched yesterday, with Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny declaring his party would vote against the measure on December 7th.
Stressing the need for a government with a new mandate, Mr Kenny said he had no faith in the Coalition, which now lacked all credibility.
“If the Government are as confident as they say they are about their budget, then they could have an election before then.”
The Cabinet discussions yesterday focused on the choices to be made in the budget and in the four-year plan designed to reduce the deficit to 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2014.
Mr Rehn will hold meetings in Dublin today and tomorrow to outline the EU analysis of Ireland’s economic problems and the need for a comprehensive plan to bring Government spending in line with revenue.
The commissioner will meet Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan in Government Buildings at 6pm today and the pair will give a joint press conference later in the evening.
Tomorrow Mr Rehn will hold separate meetings with representatives of Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin at the European Commission office in Dublin. He will also meet delegations from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and Ibec, as well as Prof Patrick Honohan, the governor of the Central Bank. In the afternoon he will deliver a lecture at the Institute for European Affairs, before returning to Brussels in the evening.
Mr Rehn has publicly backed the Government’s €6 billion adjustment target for 2011, but has also warned that further difficult decisions remained to be taken.
Mr Kenny's comments on the budget came after he launched a plan for sweeping reforms in the public service devised by his party's enterprise spokesman, Richard Bruton. The policy document, Reinventing Government, advocates a reduction of 30,000 in the size of the public service, the abolition of 145 quangos and the scrapping of Fás and the HSE.