FORMER TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern has joined Brian Cowen in accepting some responsibility for the current economic crisis, saying property-based tax incentives should have been abolished earlier.
Mr Ahern said he agreed with everything in the speech Taoiseach Brian Cowen delivered at Dublin City University on Thursday night.
“Even the self-criticisms in it I accept also, which was mainly the tax incentives,” Mr Ahern said, when asked about the issue at the launch of the Aviva stadium in Dublin.
“We probably should have closed those down a good bit earlier but there were always fierce pressures, there was endless pressures to keep them. There was endless pressures to extend them,” he said.
He said the pressure had come from developers, owners of sites, areas that didn’t have the developments, community councils, politicians and civic society.
Mr Ahern also suggested Mr Cowen should communicate more and said that while he was taoiseach he had engaged with the media on a daily basis.
“I think in the world we live in that’s necessary. I regret lots of things but I never regret that. I think that’s the way you should operate.”
Mr Cowen returned to the issue yesterday saying that he took full responsibility for his actions in managing the economy in the years leading up to the property crash, but rejected the “facile analysis that one person caused all this trouble”.
“Since this whole crisis has come, there isn’t a day or an evening or a night when I haven’t been concerned and worried about the impact this is having on people,” he said.
He accused Opposition politicians of rewriting history and revisionism, saying they had called him “Ebenezer Scrooge” when he produced budgets. “I’m not a Dickens specialist but I know it doesn’t suggest over-generosity when you’re being portrayed in that way.”
At a briefing in Government Buildings Mr Cowen said parliamentary colleagues and others had offered constructive criticisms about the need “to get out there and communicate our message”.
Speaking earlier on RTÉ, Mr Cowen said that, in hindsight, he should have introduced a property tax to cool the property boom.
Responding to the Taoiseach’s defence of his actions as minister for finance, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny accused him of “washing his hands” on his role in Ireland’s economic crisis. Speaking during a front bench meeting in Cork yesterday, Mr Kenny also claimed Fianna Fáil was spreading fear by considering cuts to the old age pension. “Sorry is a word that Fianna Fáil do not recognise, they don’t understand,” Mr Kenny told party colleagues.
Mr Kenny said the Taoiseach, in defending his own personal handling of events, was refusing to acknowledge that he drove the economy “up on the rocks” for four years when he was minister for finance.
“He expects everybody else to accept responsibility for it but not him. It’s another example of hands being washed by those in charge, a refusal to accept responsibility for their part in destroying the Irish economy and heaping economic woes . . . upon so many people.”
The Fine Gael leader said the best thing the Taoiseach could do now was hold the three pending byelections, or a general election, so the people could have their say.
Labour Party deputy leader Joan Burton said Mr Cowen was perhaps beginning to acknowledge his and his party’s role in Ireland’s economic crisis. “Here is an ostrich finally removing its head from the sand, perhaps,” she said.
She said his Dublin City University speech on Thursday was the first tentative admission that Ireland was suffering from a home-grown economic crisis.
“While Brian Cowen is correct in asserting that he inherited a menu of policies from his predecessors, Bertie Ahern and Charlie McCreevy, he cannot pin all of the blame on those two office holders – he must accept at least a share of the blame,” she said.
Ms Burton said Mr Cowen had not only ignored but actively rejected clear warnings given by her as Labour’s finance spokeswoman on numerous occasions.