LABOUR PARTY:LABOUR LEADER Eamon Gilmore said yesterday his party was seeking a mandate from the people to renegotiate elements of the EU-IMF deal.
He said the terms of the bailout package were “crippling the economy” and putting the entire burden of the banking debts on the Irish taxpayer.
“It is perfectly clear that the deal that was negotiated is not going to work. It is not going to allow the Irish economy to recover,” he told RTÉ’s This Week programme.
Dismissing Fianna Fáil claims that the essential parts of the deal were non-negotiable, Mr Gilmore said Labour in government would seek to fundamentally redraw the deal on a number of levels.
“We can’t have a situation where the taxpayer is bearing the entire burden of bank debt and not the bondholders.”
The interest rate would also have to be reconsidered as Ireland had been landed with a “penal rate”, he said.
Labour would also seek a longer period for budgetary adjustment, seeking to reduce the exchequer deficit to 4.8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product by 2014, and to below 3 per cent by 2016.
Mr Gilmore claimed Labour was the only party setting out a “clear basis” for renegotiation.
“Whoever is the new taoiseach will walk into the European Council meeting on his own and he needs to be in a position to say, ‘I have the authority and the mandate of the Irish people to seek the renegotiation of this deal’,” he said.
He said renegotiating the deal would only be possible if the incoming government received “a very clear mandate” to do so by the people. He also insisted there was no alternative but to renegotiate the deal.
