Kenny says Government strategy 'does not exist'

UNDER THE leadership of Taoiseach Brian Cowen “Ireland has been relegated from the premiership of world economies to the third division”, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has claimed.

During trenchant Opposition criticism of the Government during the Dáil debate on the economy, Mr Kenny said that “under the Taoiseach’s economic leadership, Fianna Fáil turned the Celtic Tiger into a bubble economy. It destroyed the basis of our economic and social progress.

“When he was in charge of the Department of Finance we had the biggest property boom of any EU country, the highest level of personal debt, the biggest loss of national competitiveness and the biggest reliance on the construction sector to provide jobs.”

The Mayo TD also hit out at Mr Cowen’s speech during the debate, and said it “belies the reality, which is that the clear Government strategy” that the Taoiseach referred to “does not exist”.

“We are facing an economic crisis of frightening proportions,” he said.“I am worried that officials in the Department of Finance, the banks, the National Treasury Management Agency and the regulatory authorities have never before faced a crisis of this scale.

“The Government is not leading any co-ordination between the various sectors of the Irish financial sector.” He said “private sector wages are falling for the first time in the history of the State, even though Ireland continues to be the most expensive country in Europe”.

Mr Kenny asked “what other country is hiking up taxes while slashing investment in infrastructure because its public finances are in such a mess? Is the national debt of any other country about to double in the space of two years?”

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore was equally scathing in his criticism, claiming the country “is now led by a Government that is incapable of leading us out of the recession and that is bankrupt of ideas”.

He hit out at the Taoiseach’s speech as “the most depressing thing I have heard in this period of recession”.

Mr Gilmore sharply criticised Mr Cowen’s comment that there was “little point in looking back” at how some of the crisis might have been anticipated or avoided. “The neck of it,” he said. “There is every point in looking back because the pilot who crash-landed this economy is hardly the pilot who will take off this economy and lead us back out of this recession.”

The Dún Laoghaire TD said it was an economic crisis “but it needs a political solution. It requires a government that is clearly in command of the situation in everything it says and does.” There should be a plan “that shows the Government has a grip on the situation”. It “should be a plan not to shrink the economy, but to stimulate it. The question is not what can be cut, but what can be created.”

He said the recovery plan should be based “on the three Cs: namely, confidence among consumers, credibility among investors and competitiveness on world markets”.