The Labour leader has been rewriting history to attack Haughey's economic record, writes John O'Donoghue
Pat Rabbitte has spent many years building a reputation for never letting the facts get in the way of a political attack, but even for him his attack on the Taoiseach's comments on the economic record of Charles Haughey is supremely brazen.
Mr Rabbitte has now surpassed his own record by employing an approach that would embarrass wiser men. The leader of the Labour Party has managed to give us a reinterpretation of the last 30 years of economic and political history which does not stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny.
Perhaps the most striking part of the Rabbitte revisionist/amnesiac school of history is that the activities and policies of Deputy Rabbitte and his associates are airbrushed from view.
Groucho Mark's recollection comes to mind: "I remember Doris Day from before she was a virgin."
According to Deputy Rabbitte, the Labour-Fine Gael government of 1973-77 should no longer be seen as the one that introduced substantial deficit financing to Ireland, but rather as fiscally virtuous.
The truly incredible thing about this assertion is that it was these very policies that he now praises which caused him to desert the Labour party in favour of a hard- left movement.
He then went on a crusade over the next 15 years during which he sought to destroy the Labour Party as the standard-bearer of the Irish left. This established a pattern for the following two decades where he trenchantly advocated policies that would have caused dramatically more damage than anything done by any of the governments that held office.
There is no doubt but that the fiscal policies of the period 1973- 1987 were wrong. We spent too much. We taxed too much. The result was a sustained economic crisis.
Deputy Rabbitte's stand on all of this was to consistently demand more spending and more taxation. Every single budget of that time was criticised by him and his then party as being too conservative.
One of the few things he did agree with was the decision of his then enemies in the Labour Party to run away from government in 1986 because their partners were not willing to run even higher deficits.
This was at a time when Ireland had the highest debt per capita in the world and was experiencing the highest rate of emigration since the Famine.
Although Deputy Rabbitte clearly does not like it, the simple fact is that the fiscal corrections implemented by Fianna Fáil in government from 1987 are an inescapable part of the foundations for later prosperity and, further, they would not have happened had his or any other opposition party been in power.
Not alone did he and his present and past parties oppose fiscal sanity by calling for more spending, they also opposed the other keys to later growth. Never capable of taking a pro-enterprise stand, they consistently opposed the lower rate of corporation tax which did so much to attract inward investment.
While now posing as its guardians, they also voted against the social partnership approach introduced by Fianna Fáil which replaced destructive industrial conflict with a united approach to vital economic and social issues.
The development of the EU's competencies through various treaties,and its new approach to regional development also played a part in our economic turnaround.
This had no attraction for Deputy Rabbitte who was as reliable as Anthony Coughlan in his opposition to EU treaties.
Faced with the full force of the reality of economic progress, Deputy Rabbitte is now trying to bury this past, but the thrust of his policies as Labour Party leader shows that little as changed.
During the largest international recession in 20 years, he opposed fiscal restraint and called for substantial increases in spending. Had the policies he advocated been implemented, Ireland would not now have one of Europe's strongest fiscal situations.
We would, in fact, have substantially less available for investing in public services.
He also continues his hostility to a pro-enterprise taxation policy and refuses to explain how he would fund the many billions in promises that have been made to a vast array of groups. His attempt to deny the reality of the policies that delivered economic prosperity, and his support for policies that would have delivered a deeper and more sustained crisis, is remarkable enough.
However, when you take all of this together with his approach to the general political history of Ireland in the last 30 years, it is nothing less than incredible.
The Taoiseach has consistently defended the work of the many tribunals and inquiries currently in place. Those dealing with political affairs are shedding worthwhile light on practices which all democrats must oppose. In contrast, Deputy Rabbitte's policy continues to be highly selective.
For him, accountability for your political choices is something for other people to be concerned with. Now that he has decided to lecture us all about the 1970s and 1980s, it is surely about time that he explained even some basic things about his own behaviour.
When he left Labour in 1976 he joined a party which had no problem cosying up to totalitarian regimes. It was not just the despotic North Korea it developed fraternal relations with. It had no problem accepting hospitality and support from the regimes that incarcerated Vaclav Havel and Andrei Sakharov.
At home it championed Marxist Leninism and sought to impose democratic centralism on a fledgling democracy though surreptitious means. There was a concerted campaign to ensure that the national broadcaster promoted the interests of their party.
Ultimately, it only gave up the ghost at the same time as the Soviet Union in 1991 and decided to abandon overt hard-left politics.
Having completed a reverse takeover of the Labour Party, Deputy Rabbitte is now attempting to rewrite the record to suit his own ends. Instead of denying the facts, it would be more productive if he tried, for once, to learn a bit from history.
At present he leads one of the last unreformed social democratic parties in Europe.
Almost every one of its sister parties has undergone a process of change and re-evaluation. Rather than opt for the pretence of always having been right on every issue, they have often taken very difficult decisions to re-evaluate their own records and platforms.
Other parties in Ireland have also changed and recognised the error of policies and practices that they followed at different times. Deputy Rabbitte's attempt to heap all of our past economic ills on one person and one government is as absurd as the dogma to which he has devoted most of his career.
It may be a long journey from Sinn Féin the Workers' Party to the Workers' Party, from the Workers' Party to New Agenda, from New Agenda to Democratic Left, from Democratic Left to the Labour Party, and from there to an embrace with Fine Gael, but history cannot be rewritten to accommodate the passage.
Not even for a tired and retired revolutionary.
John O'Donoghue is Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism.