THE LAST leaders’ debate of the election campaign saw heated exchanges on taxation proposals, the EU-IMF deal and the sale of State assets. Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny’s tax proposals came under intense scrutiny, with Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin claiming they were neither honest, credible nor costed.
Mr Kenny expressed the ambition that on the centenary of 1916 “we send the IMF home”. He said Mr Martin “was a central member of the Government that could not tell the truth about the IMF being here in Ireland”.
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said leadership was about values and good judgment and the Labour Party’s values were centred on fairness. There were moments of crisis when judgment would be tested and Labour had shown good judgment in not backing the bank guarantee.
Mr Kenny said that the Government had talked about turning the corner and green shoots but Ireland had €100 billion of debt which was “an obscenity” and he accused Mr Martin of being “full of wind and spoof”.
Mr Martin said Fine Gael proposed putting taxes through the local authorities who, when they got permission, would screw small business and choke jobs.
Mr Kenny responded that Fianna Fáil didn’t have a plan at all, but Mr Martin continued to press him for detail of Fine Gael’s plans on cuts.
“Answer the question,” Mr Martin said. “I know what you’re going to say again. Fourteen years, I’ve a five-point plan, let’s get Ireland working. We need a bit more than that now Enda in terms of the future of this country.”
“It’s all there on www.finegael.ie,” Mr Kenny replied. He objected to the interruptions from Mr Martin who, he said, “never opened his mouth at the Cabinet table”.
Mr Martin said Mr Kenny was telling fibs. He could not tell people we’re going to get €6 billion in cuts in four years without giving them the detail. Fine Gael didn’t want to talk about the painful side of its proposals.
Fine Gael was not proposing a property tax “nationally”, Mr Kenny said. But after 2014, local authorities would have the option of introducing a profit tax on the sale of houses.
Mr Gilmore said Fine Gael had costed its tax increases at €2.4 billion but when additional taxes through the local authority system, water charges and graduate tax were included, the actual amount was €4.1 billion.
Asked how much more he would put into the banks, Mr Martin said a further €10 billion in recapitalisation was needed, and a further contingency of €25 billion was available if that was required.
Mr Kenny said it was prudent to see what emerged from the solvency and liquidity tests. “You can’t burn bondholders unless the bank has been declared insolvent, so let’s see what the scale of this is.” If the scale was beyond what Ireland had committed to, there would have to be burden-sharing.
Mr Gilmore said the banks required recapitalisation but the extent wouldn’t be clear until the results of the stress tests became known at the end of March.
On Nama, Mr Kenny said it was a secret society which needed an injection of competence, openness and transparency. Mr Gilmore warned that people, having been burned once, could end up being burned again when the sale of assets in Nama proceeded at a further loss to the taxpayer.
Mr Kenny said reform would have to start at the top by reforming the political system, by slashing costs of such a big government for such a very small country.
Mr Gilmore said Labour offered a fair, balanced and sensible plan. He promised that if Labour was elected, no family would lose their home during the crisis, no one earning less than €100,000 a year would be taxed more and children would not be punished for the failure of Fianna Fáil.
The Fianna Fáil and Labour leaders both rejected the Fine Gael plan to sell what Mr Kenny described as “non-strategic State assets”, including “ESB power generation but not the transmission lines, Bord Gáis generation but not the pipelines”.
Mr Gilmore said “power generation by ESB or Bord Gáis are pretty strategic particularly within an island. If it were a good idea we certainly wouldn’t be doing it now, when prices are low”.
Mr Martin insisted that “the State does need to keep its lever of control over energy and that’s ESB and Bord Gáis. It would be wrong for the country strategically.” Mr Gilmore said he and Mr Kenny both agreed that they had to renegotiate the interest rate and share the burden with bondholders.