Labour leader Eamon Gilmore confirmed today his party would be making a submission ahead of the Government’s emergency budget.
Opposition parties were briefed yesterday on the scale of the problem by Department of Finance officials and were invited by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to make their own suggestions about what should be in the budget.
Speaking in Co Meath, Mr Gilmore said Labour was now “engaging with the Department of Finance and seeking detailed information on the cost of various options which were being considered.
“The extent to which twelve years of Fianna Fáil government has driven the economy into the ground has become evident following the publication of the exchequer figures for February,” he said.
“It is clear that difficult decisions will have to be taken if we are to turn the economy around and rescue the country from more than a decade of Fianna Fail mis-rule.”
Mr Gilmore said whatever measures were taken they had to be “proportionate, fair and, most important of all, effective”.
He said the party would insist that job creation and retention would be top of the agenda. Another priority for Labour would be to ensure that low- and middle-income earners are not asked to “carry the can for the Fianna Fail policies that puffed and bloated the construction sector”.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen has insisted that the Government learned only on the morning of last Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting that the February exchequer returns would show a disquieting €2 billion shortfall for the first two months of the year.
The Opposition parties said they were disturbed and astonished at the Taoiseach’s admission and said it was another sign of the Government’s complacency.
Mr Cowen said the Government did not receive updates on a weekly basis and that accurate figures were not available to it until the end of each month.
However, the Taoiseach also denied the suggestion that the Government was caught on the back foot by the dramatic deterioration in the public finances during February.
“I don’t think we were caught by surprise,” he said. “This is an international phenomenon and [an] international recession is taking place. The level of revenue that the economy is generating is less than expected, even though we had budgeted for a decrease this year.
“So as this situation develops, you have to respond appropriately. At the end of the January figures, we came forward with €2 billion savings. The end of February figures indicate that we’re going to have to do even more.”
Separately, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny today repeated his call alled for cross-party consensus on its new three point plan for regulation, which would bring in expert international staff to redesign the Irish regulatory system.
"In order to restore trust to Ireland's financial system, it may now be necessary to borrow reputation and credibility from abroad. This could be done by replacing the current board and senior management team, and
by seconding expert staff from international bodies like the Bank of International Settlements to restructure and redesign our regulatory system and give it a hallmark of approval within 12 months," said Mr Kenny.
“The lack of an effective regulatory system, and the Government’s preference for hands-off regulation, have cost Ireland dearly. If the Taoiseach is genuine when he talks about engaging with Fine Gael to resolve the current crisis, he must respond positively to my request for a cross-party group to review banking regulations,” he added.