THE MAJOR choice facing the electorate in this year’s general election will be who will be taoiseach in a Fine Gael and Labour coalition, Eamon Gilmore has said.
He said his party would not enter a coalition with Fianna Fáil or Sinn Féin.
“This general election will be primarily between the Labour Party and Fine Gael to see who will lead the next government,” he said.
In an interview on RTÉ's News at One, Mr Gilmore said that this year's election would provide the first opportunity in the history of the State for a government that was led by neither Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael.
He agreed that the party would need to win more than 50 seats to achieve this goal.
Asked was he totally ruling out an arrangement with Fianna Fáil, he said: “Fianna Fáil, because of what they have done to the Irish economy, because they effectively bankrupted the country, has to be put out of Government and into opposition”.
When asked by presenter Seán O’Rourke about his antipathy to an arrangement with Sinn Féin, Mr Gilmore said that the mathematics did not add up and it was not going to happen.
But despite persistent questioning about the reasons for excluding a left-wing party whose policies were closer to Labour’s than Fine Gael’s, Mr Gilmore rejected the suggestion that Sinn Féin’s situation was analogous to that faced by his former party, Democratic Left, almost 20 years ago.
“I don’t believe it is in the country’s interest that government is made up of minority parties that are at the edge of politics,” he said.
Mr Gilmore said the suggestion by Green Party leader John Gormley yesterday that the election may happen in late March represented a U-turn by the Greens.
“The Greens told the Irish people [on November 23rd] that the election would be called in January,” he said.
Mr Gilmore said he saw no reason why the Finance Bill could not be published in early January and put through the Oireachtas in two or three weeks.
Also referring to Minister for Defence Tony Killeen’s suggestion of a referendum on the Seanad on the same day as the election he said: “What we are beginning to see is excuse after excuse by Fianna Fáil to prolong the life of this Government”.
He confirmed Labour intends to table a motion of no confidence in Government if it fails to call an election in January.
In relation to his party’s new policy to abolish the Seanad, he said that that process would take part in the context of a convention to look at the whole constitution.
On his party’s economic policies, he said its policy on setting up a strategic investment bank with €2 billion from the National Pension Reserve Fund still stood. Asked how would his party borrow the other €18 billion for the bank, he reiterated that the IMF-EU bailout deal needed to be renegotiated.
He rejected the suggestion that it was unrealistic to revisit the interest rates of the deal or to argue that senior bondholders should make contributions.
He said that in government his party would seek a major renegotiation and not just “tweaking”.
“Fianna Fáil put the country into the pawnshop. It’s our job to get us out of the pawnshop,” he said.
