Taoiseach likened to captain of the 'Titanic'

A GOVERNMENT backbencher has condemned the Government’s approach to the economic crisis and has compared the Taoiseach to the captain of the Titanic.

Tommy Broughan (Lab, Dublin North East) said the prediction of “imminent national bankruptcy” by economist Morgan Kelly had been “shrugged off by the Government, which is still negotiating desperately just to get a 1 per cent cut in the bailout interest rate”.

He said: “President Sarkozy is still saying non. However, the Taoiseach, with all the insouciance of the captain of the Titanic, continues to sail towards the iceberg of national bankruptcy and ruin.”

Mr Broughan, speaking during the Dáil debate on the Government’s jobs initiative, said: “Ireland is not Greece, but the devastating budget cuts of 2009, 2010 and 2011 are imposing increasing hardships on our people and cannot go on for three or four more years.”

Closing the debate, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan defended the jobs initiative and said he had a “very simple philosophy”.

“Rather than inventing everything from the beginning, let’s look at what is working and build on that. Then, let us look at what might work and build on that. Following that, let us look at the people involved and do something specific for those most hit by the recession and the most vulnerable.”

He also defended the controversial pension levy to fund the jobs initiative and said the pensions industry itself had recommended a 0.5 per cent levy last year rather than a cut in tax relief on pension contributions.

Mr Noonan said he would meet industry representatives and ask them why, before Christmas, they thought a levy of 0.5 per cent would not harm funds, and why a levy of 0.6 per cent would now “cause the sky to fall in”.

During a question and answer session on the debate Mr Noonan told Catherine Murphy (Ind, Kildare North) that the levy was not retrospective. “It is being calculated on the annual value of each pension fund as of January 1st of each year from 2011 onwards. The levy is similar to stamp duty.”

Fianna Fáil TD Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly) asked about capital programmes for schools, roads and house retrofitting and said “70 per cent of this funding was already committed by the previous government. What we have here is an exercise in packaging and wrapping.” Mr Noonan told him Fianna Fáil “left an awful lot of snares and traps behind after them” and “the least you could do is acknowledge that rather than lecture us about what we might or might not do”.

Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP, Dun Laoghaire) asked why the Minister had set his face against taxing wealth and those earning more than €100,000 annually, rather than “raiding the pension funds of ordinary workers”.

Mr Noonan asked Mr Boyd Barrett what the difference was “between real wealth and €5 million in a pension fund”. He added: “Maybe out on the Gold Coast ordinary workers have €5 million in pension funds, but not down my way”.