Listeners to The Irish Times Inside Politics podcast were asked to submit questions to Hugh Linehan for his interview with Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin. Listen to the podcast here or read an edited version of their conversation below.
Micheál Martin answers listener questions on coalition red lines, the economic outlook, renter's rights and more
SARAH: If Donald Trump follows through on his election promises for Ireland, we’re no longer going to be drowning in billions of corporation tax. In that eventuality, would Fianna Fáil be willing to broaden our current tax base?
MARTIN: First of all, I think Sarah raises a key point in terms of what will happen with President Trump’s administration, and what will the difference be between the rhetoric of the election campaign and the actual implementation of policy, and the divide between the federal government, state governments and indeed the Congress itself.
And so there’s a lot of variables there, so I think we’ve been preparing for months. I think if a tariff war emerges, that’s going to be challenging as a small open economy.
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And we would, first of all, protect public services. That would be our key priority. We do need to continue to invest in health services. So we provided for an extra 25,000 workers in health over the next five years. Why? Because population is growing, we’re living longer and we’re ageing.
We’re not narrowing the tax base as much as others are in our manifesto… We are narrowing it to some extent, but not to the same extent as Sinn Féin, for example, or indeed Fine Gael. I think Sinn Féin in particular is narrowing the tax base in a very irresponsible way, and is also massively increasing taxes because they’re going for a €3.5 billion tax package of tax hike increases, which I think will destroy the enterprise part of the economy…
I accept we will have to adapt [if corporation tax revenues slow]. All parties have to, to be honest. If the world is in turmoil, we have to. And so if the world is in turmoil and things go wrong, we have to adapt, adapt our spending.
SEAN: Before the last two elections, you promised not to return Fine Gael to office. You broke your word on both occasions. Why then should we believe your promise not to share power with Sinn Féin?
LINEHAN: On the other hand, Oran says, does the Taoiseach, do the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste support the Belfast Agreement? And if so, does the Tánaiste refusing to enter government with Sinn Féin not constitute a democratic deficit and is akin to a unionist-style veto of Irish citizens’ democratic rights?
MARTIN: On Sean’s question in terms of, if you go back to 2016, we did say we would not go into government with Sinn Féin. [They] wrote to us after the election. And we wrote back and said, no, we’re not going into government with you. And in 2020 Sinn Féin wrote to us and we wrote back saying, no, we’re not prepared to go into government.
LINEHAN: And what about the Fine Gael point?
MARTIN: I think the fundamental point for us is I do believe governments have to be formed after general elections. And I’ve always been constructive in that respect.
On this occasion, we are saying core principles matter. Home ownership matters. Parties being democratic, parties being pro-Europe. Positively pro-European Union and being a parties-being-positively-pro-an-enterprise economy, because I think the economic model over the last 50-60 years, which is a pro-enterprise one, attracting foreign direct investment into the country, growing native enterprise, has worked.
I don’t believe genuinely that Sinn Féin get the enterprise economy. And if you look at their manifesto, they’re proposing €3.5 billion of very severe taxes, particularly on entrepreneurs or people who will earn over €90,000 or €100,000.
If you’re to say to a person who spends 10 years building up a small business, as soon as you begin to make profits, we’re going to crucify you, that won’t work in an enterprise economy. On Europe, Sinn Féin opposed joining the European Union.
And one of the big mistakes they made was to strongly oppose joining the European Union. And they’ve opposed every treaty since… It’s consistently negative to the European Union. It grudgingly supports membership.
HANNAH: When the election is actually over, if you do find yourself negotiating a new programme for government with one, two or maybe even more parties, what would be the red lines for you and for Fianna Fáil at that negotiating table?
MARTIN: I’ve given you the kind of overarching principles around enterprise economy, positively pro-European. One key one will be a national therapy service in schools. I’m not happy about that. Obviously, a lot of parents out there are very, very frustrated in the failure to get access to therapeutic interventions.
And there has been a policy that was developed back in 2013 in the health service around progressing disability, [it] took therapists out of special schools and that system, in my view, hasn’t worked.
I’m saying, and Fianna Fáil is saying, before we sign up to any new government, there has to be financial provision and it has to be stitched into the programme for government. Do [I] envision resistance to that from other parties? I do, and from within the system. The HSE opposed this, the Department of Health have misgivings about it.
The Department of Children had agreed a pilot over the summer. I had got agreement from everybody… The HSE didn’t implement it. And they talked about aligning therapists to schools. I’m not talking about aligning. I’m talking about having multidisciplinary teams of therapists in situ, beginning with special schools and then moving in to Deis Plus schools.
Because we’re also going to develop a concept of Deis Plus, the most disadvantaged schools of all, with very significant background issues. We’re going to give extra resources to [them], and part of that would be therapies. And then roll it out into the national system over time… And that, for me, is a red-line issue.
DAMIEN: As a young person growing up in rural Ireland, I have seen the devastating effects of drug use at first hand. All research into drug use clearly shows that the younger that they start using it, the worse the outcome is. So why are you proposing to decriminalise drugs?
MARTIN: What I would say to Damien is that we’re not, we’re not legalising drugs, but we’re simply saying that a young person who uses it for personal use should not have to go through the criminal justice system and have that on their record for the rest of their lives. There was a lot of work done on this across all political parties in Dáil Éireann and indeed the Citizens’ Assembly. A lot of evidence came to the Citizens’ Assembly that a health-led approach will give a richer dividend than just a simply criminal-justice approach to personal use.
And, you know, the first gateway drug is alcohol. Let’s be clear on that. And anyone, and I’ve engaged with people in addiction for a long time, in addiction services, and most of the experts would have said to me, alcohol is the first gateway drug. And after that, then people experiment with other drugs. I mean, so I’m against drug use but I do know that there are a whole load of societal levers that we have to deploy to prevent people from falling into addiction.
But addiction is a disease, if I can be crude. Addiction is something that needs to be treated.
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