MINISTER OF State for Finance Martin Mansergh has launched a scathing attack on Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, linking his former membership of the Workers Party with the Soviet and North Korean communist regimes.
Mr Mansergh said Mr Gilmore seemed to believe that the road to power was to vilify Fianna Fáil and its leadership, including repeating “a simplistic mantra” that Taoiseach Brian Cowen had committed economic treason when minister for finance.
“Karl Marx would have scorned the notion that any one man as leader was responsible for all the ills of society,” said Mr Mansergh, before linking Mr Gilmore’s membership of the Workers’ Party with support for communist regimes in the former USSR and North Korea. “The repeated charge of economic treason is not only unworthy and absurd, but unfortunately comes from the sort of culture of vicious denunciation that is more a characteristic hangover of ultra left-wing politics than consistent with the honourable traditions of a democratic Labour Party.
“The Workers’ Party in the 1980s, when Gilmore was a member, were fraternal mendicants of the Soviet and North Korean communist parties, and saw the future of this country as irreversible socialism until the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Bloc removed their blinkers and eventually headed them towards the Labour Party, of which, since 2002, they have taken over the leadership.”
Asked to comment on Dr Mansergh’s remarks yesterday, Mr Gilmore said: “I think they are very funny, and I am sure they went down well in Tipperary.”
Speaking at a Fianna Fáil conference in Cashel, Co Tipperary, for party members from Tipperary North and Tipperary South, Mr Mansergh defended Mr Cowen’s performance as minister for finance and Fianna Fáil’s performance in government over the past two years.
He said the party had lived up to its political responsibilities while he pointed out that Mr Cowen as minister for finance had performed well, driving down the net national debt to about 14pc of GNP, its lowest level for 40 years.
Mr Cowen had also taken those on the minimum wage out of the tax net, while he also moved to wind up property tax breaks though he himself had conceded that he had not done this quickly enough, he said.
“It was not his job to second-guess the regulator. Nor is Ireland a government-run economy.
“The crisis here, as elsewhere, was caused mainly by irresponsibility in the property and financial sectors, which light touch regulation was unable effectively to control.”
Mr Mansergh said that the Government had been correct to provide a bank guarantee scheme, and when the economy recovers the State will recoup the cost of supporting AIB and the Bank of Ireland. the decision to support Anglo Irish Bank was “the least worst option”.
There was a lot of evidence that Ireland was “turning the corner” economically, and while Ireland had been more badly affected than many other economies, it also appeared that Ireland was recovering more quickly than originally anticipated.
“I do not know what Labour economic policy is, or whether it would be new Labour or old Labour, and I question whether Fine Gael’s new era plans, which involve substantial additional borrowing, are compatible with the euro zone-wide imperative to accelerate the reduction of sovereign debt,” he said.