Kenmare conference: The era of major tax cuts is over, the leader of the Labour Party, Pat Rabbitte, told an economic conference in Kenmare at the weekend, but he promised that his party would not increase taxation if elected to power.
Mr Rabbitte described his position on tax policy as "close to that of the Taoiseach", who recently indicated that the Government was likely to have reached the end of a major tax-cutting agenda.
Mr Rabbitte said there was an "imagination deficit" in Government economic policy.
But the leader of the Progressive Democrats, Michael McDowell, criticised the Labour Party's record on income taxation and said that the economy would not be safe if the party was elected.
The two leaders were the keynote speakers at the annual conference of the Dublin Economic Workshop in Kenmare.
In a Saturday evening session debating the economic agenda for the next government, Mr Rabbitte said Labour would lift the burden of government failure from the backs of Irish families.
"Those on the left, who are committed to the idea that government is central to economic and social progress, have the strongest interest in its reform."
Mr Rabbitte told The Irish Times that Fianna Fáil was "probably" closer to the Labour Party on the issue of infrastructural investment, but he said it remained to be seen whether the next Budget would be driven by the Taoiseach's views or by those of the Progressive Democrats.
He disagreed with Mr McDowell's statement that the economy required inequality to function.
"The Tánaiste is on public record as favouring a measure of inequality. I don't."
Despite its strong economy, the Republic remained one of the more unequal of the developed economies, he added.
Enterprise in the aviation, energy and telecoms sectors had been affected by a "litany of failures", the Labour leader said.
"We have a thing called Transport 21 which is so ephemeral they should have asked Enya to write a theme song for it, and where there are time lines, they are in never-never land. Broadband is to the knowledge economy what steam was to the Victorians, yet broadband league tables consistently show Ireland to be a laggard in this vital infrastructure."
Mr McDowell said that the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, had effectively surrendered any separate economic strategy for the party and that a vote for Fine Gael at the next election would be a vote for Labour Party policies. Economic prosperity in the Republic could not be taken for granted, he warned.
The Tánaiste said Mr Rabbitte had failed to honour what he described as a promise to shift the Labour Party's traditional focus from supporting producer interests to supporting the interests of consumers.
