Pearse Doherty defends Gerry Adams’s leadership

Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty has said he does not believe party leader Gerry Adams has become a liability to the party's electoral chances.

Mr Adams has been criticised in recent days for his handling of questions on matters such as the economy and how the party would remove water charges but Mr Doherty dismissed suggestions that it was time for him to step aside.

Sinn Féin worked as a collective leadership, he said.

“It’s not about individuals. It’s not about personalities.”

“Who’s at the helm is a secondary issue. It’s about the type of policies we’re introducing.”

Mr Doherty said he had no “personal ambition” to be leader “but it’s something that if the party so decided at a later stage that it was something they wanted me to do then I’d be willing to step up to the challenge”.

He was speaking as the party outlined its policies on the economy in Dublin yesterday.

Mr Doherty, Sinn Féin's finance spokesman, criticised Minister for Finance Michael Noonan over his figures on the cost of removing the universal social charge (USC). He said Mr Noonan had underestimated the cost of abolishing the charge by €500 million.

“In week one he got it wrong by €2 billion,” he said about the “fiscal space” or money available for tax cuts and increases in funding of public services. “In week two he got it wrong by over €1 billion and today he got it wrong by up to €500 million.”

Mr Doherty said the Minister had stated that the abolition of the USC would cost €3.7 billion. However, he said it would in fact cost €4.2 billion because the abolition was incremental over the term of an administration in which some €500 million more in USC would be collected. Mr Noonan’s figures “don’t hold up”, he said.

He said Sinn Féin was committed to abolishing water charges and property tax and to covering the cost with an extra income tax of 7 cent on every euro earned above €100,000. He said 6 per cent of the population was in this bracket.

On the party’s economic plans, Mr Doherty said that at a cost of €88 million Sinn Féin would take 277,000 people out of the USC net, which the extra tax on high earners would cover. Sinn Féin would also spend €10 billion on public services and housing, building 36,000 homes in the next administration and 100,000 over 14 years.