Fianna Fáil will make a determined effort to put its faltering start to the general election campaign behind it today with the launch of its manifesto in the Round Room of the Mansion House in Dublin. Reform of stamp duty to help first-time house buyers is expected to feature in the document, along with plans already announced to cut the basic rate of income tax to 18 per cent and to halve the rate of PRSI while abolishing the income ceiling.
Minister for Finance Brian Cowen yesterday attacked Opposition proposals on stamp duty, claiming they were destabilising the market, but he said Fianna Fáil would introduce measures to stabilise it. He also said Fianna Fail's tax and PRSI plans were focused on low- and middle-income workers and their families who, he said, had been largely ignored by Fine Gael and Labour.
Fianna Fáil strategists are hoping the manifesto launch will enable them to regain the initiative in the general election battle, which has largely been with the Opposition parties since the Taoiseach surprised people by dissolving the Dáil early last Sunday. His refusal to take any questions from the media on the first day of the campaign and the disclosure of further details about his personal finances have dogged him since then.
The Taoiseach was not helped by a statement from President McAleese in the United States yesterday pointing out that she had informed him some considerable time in advance of her plans to leave the country last Sunday morning. Mr Ahern had suggested that his early morning trip to the Áras happened because he had not realised that the President would be out of the country this week.
The escalating nurses' dispute had an impact on the political debate yesterday, with Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny saying that if he was elected to government he would change the criteria for benchmarking so that issues like the nurses' dispute could be dealt with in a more flexible manner.
Mr Kenny called on the Government to "sort out" the dispute by taking a "creative and imaginative" approach. Asked what he would do as head of a Fine Gael-led government, he said: "I would change the benchmarking process, make the criteria more flexible, make them more broad, so that the issues that nurses legitimately put on the table can have a process through which they can be discussed and negotiated.
"And in terms of the proposals published by the nursing unions for a change of work practices and increased efficiencies, that requires imagination and a creative response from government and I'd give it that," said Mr Kenny.
"I made the point over three years ago that the benchmarking process is too rigid, is too structured and does not deal with legitimate anxieties, concerns and indeed issues that groups might want to put on the table," he added.
Mr Kenny called on the Government to sort out the dispute but said that it required that Government and management come to the table with a creative and imaginative mind.
Refusing to comment on whether or not he supported the industrial action by the nurses, the Fine Gael leader said: "That's a matter for the unions. The nurses have given the unions a mandate here, that's their decision. There were 40,000 operations cancelled in the last 18 months. There are 29,000 people on waiting lists."
Meanwhile Minister for Health Mary Harney said it was vital for our society that the nurses' claims be pursued through the normal industrial relations mechanisms of the State.
"The tactics now being pursued by the INO and PNA are unfair to patients, unfair to other public sector workers and unfair to taxpayers. For patients the inevitable consequence of this action, even before operations and treatments need to be cancelled, will be to cause obvious worry and distress for patients and their families," she said.
Apart from its tax proposals the Fianna Fail's election manifesto will include a new €35 million commitment to abolish fees for most part-time students. All of the other main political parties have already committed themselves to the abolition of fees for part-time students.
The manifesto will also contain a commitment to honour the seminal importance of 1916.