Coalition is doing good job, says Gormley

GREEN PARTY:GREEN PARTY TDs will support the motion of confidence in the Government "because we believe the Government is doing a good job and will continue to do so. It's as simple as that," said Minister for the Environment John Gormley.

Sharply criticising Fine Gael and Labour, he said: “We are faced with an Opposition who believes you can make an omelette without cracking an egg.”

He had not heard the Opposition spell out in any detail “how they would make up the €20 billion deficit”.

It was a “monumental task” and “regardless of which coalition is in charge they will have to face the same difficult choices and make the same unpopular expenditure cuts. If Fine Gael and the Labour Party were in government they would have faced the wrath of the voters. They would have had to face the same difficult choices.”

The Government had come up with good ideas and policy initiatives, but the Opposition managed to tap into the public “negativity, hostility and anger”.

“It disappoints me when I see good ideas, such as the reform of local government and a directly elected mayor for Dublin, rejected.”

Mr Gormley said his party “proposed a tax on second homes. I would have thought parties on the left would see that as a good idea,” to which Sinn Féin finance spokesman Arthur Morgan said, “We are in favour of that”.

The Minister said he had read the Labour Party’s climate change Bill and “it is utterly flawed”. They “propose a climate change Bill, but reject the idea of a carbon levy. That is not joined-up thinking.”

He insisted that “people must surely accept radical reform of the planning system. I did not create any housing bubble” and that “one of the reasons for it was excessive over-zonings and rezonings throughout the country”.

Mr Gormley said that many Fine Gael councillors were involved in overzonings, to which Leo Varadkar (FG, Dublin West) said Green Party councillors in Fingal were also involved.

Deputy leader Mary White said the Government “has made mistakes, but has shown a desire to create fairness, and the Green Party has played a key role in these decisions”.

Ciarán Cuffe (Green, Dún Laoghaire) said he asked himself “every waking day ‘is this the right decision’ and despite the enormous difficulties that we encounter in our work, I still believe that the Green Party has made, is making and will make the right decisions in or out of government”. He welcomed “Fine Gael’s conversion to the green cause” but was concerned “that they assume the mantle but neglect the substance”.