THE NEXT government will have no option but to renegotiate the bailout package with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore has said.
On a tour of the Wicklow and Wexford constituencies, he said: “Renegotiation of the deal is not a promise, it is a necessity. It is simply not possible for this country to operate on the basis of that agreement.”
Describing it as the main election issue, he said: “First of all, it clearly won’t work. It provides no scope for the Irish economy to grow. It was negotiated with a weak Irish government at the end of its days, at a time when there were issues relating to other European member states, concerns relating to the euro, and so on,” he said in Enniscorthy.
He was accompanied by Labour’s general election candidates for the Wexford constituency, sitting TD Brendan Howlin and Cllr Pat Cody.
Earlier, at a Wicklow campaign launch, he said: “This is the most important general election in our lifetime.” Here he was flanked by Labour’s Wicklow candidates: Anne Ferris from Bray, county council chairman Tom Fortune from Kilcoole, and Cllr Conal Kavanagh from Wicklow town.
Mr Gilmore said a Labour-led government would “bring about the change that people are so hungry for in this country”. Today, he said, Labour would unveil the “most comprehensive set of proposals ever” on budgetary and public service reform to ensure everybody “gets a fair deal”.
