Taoiseach made 'wrong choices, not hard choices'

LABOUR:THE ELECTORATE voted no confidence in the Government because it made "the wrong choices" and "provided bad leadership", not because it made "hard choices", Labour leader Eamon Gilmore has told the Dáil.

He said it was not simply that the Taoiseach had made the wrong choices during the past year. “On every issue you acted too late,” he said. The Opposition told him a year ago there was an economic problem but the Taoiseach denied it and by delaying made the problem worse.

Mr Gilmore also said the public had no confidence in Mr Cowen “because the Taoiseach and the Government got us into the hole in the first place. It was the policies pursued by the Fianna Fáil governments, especially that presided over by the Taoiseach in his capacity as minister for finance at the time, which have added to the effects of the global economic downturn.”

Criticising the way Mr Cowen and his predecessor as finance minister, Charlie McCreevy, had operated, Mr Gilmore said that “instead of dealing with the downturn in export activity, he blew additional air into the property bubble and created the unsustainable level of construction activity. The then government tax-incentivised it and continued to inflate the bubble instead of letting it down slowly.

“This is what has created and given rise to the economic difficulties in which the country finds itself today.”

Mr Gilmore agreed that there were differences in policy between Fine Gael and Labour, but “we will honestly address those differences.

However, the real problem is not the policy differences on the Opposition benches but that Government policy continues to change from month to month and sometimes from week to week.”

Mr Gilmore said the public is “not prepared to accept that they have to pay disproportionately” while no action is being taken to make the Celtic Tiger beneficiaries who gained from the property speculation make their contribution now.

He referred to “crony capitalism” and the banking culture of “you sit on my board and I will sit on your board and somebody else will chair somebody else’s board. This is an old boys’ network.” That day “is over and it has got to go”.

But the current Government has been “used to leaving the country run on autopilot” and used to a culture that “no matter what problem arose, there was always money that could be thrown at it” and a quango to deal with it.

That Government “is not in a position to take the kind of decisions, to grab the country by the scruff of the neck, to deal with the problems the country has to deal with, to provide the kind of leadership to decent people all over the country who want to make a fresh start”.