The Opposition has rejected as bogus and deceptive the Government's defence of its own record published yesterday in advance of the first anniversary this Friday of the Coalition's return to power. Arthur Beesley and Mark Brennock report
The Fianna Fáil/PD document follows two Fianna Fáil papers in the past fortnight defending the Government against repeated Opposition claims that it has broken its election promises. Despite sustained opinion poll evidence that voters feel the Coalition has not honoured promises made before the May 2002 election, the latest publication shows the Government is determined to contest this view.
Labour leader Mr Pat Rabbitte, said the Government should have produced an 80-page apology for misleading the public rather than an 80-page self-assessment.
While the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, have produced a "progress report" each year since coming to power in 1997, yesterday's 80-page document was by far the most elaborate and expensively produced.
As the positive self-assessment was published yesterday, the Taoiseach denied again that the Government had "conned" voters before the last election. He suggested voters were "disappointed" not with the Government's performance but the economic downturn which he blamed on a global slowdown.
He said the Government had made progress in Northern Ireland; had ensured the passage of the Nice Treaty referendum; invested substantially in health, education and roads; renewed social partnership; achieved a budget surplus in difficult times and reduced road deaths through the penalty points system.
The Government had "kept faith" with its promises and was "leading as promised, not misleading as alleged".
However the Opposition parties immediately rejected the Government's assertions. While the Taoiseach highlighted extra funding for health and roads, they pointed to the abandonment of the promise to end hospital waiting lists, threatened bed closures and the reports that the Government's promised road and rail projects would take seven years longer to implement than planned.
The document said another controversially unfulfilled promise - to recruit an additional 2,000 gardaí - "will be implemented as and when economic circumstances permit".
Ms Harney said Ireland had sustained full employment so far and had "managed our relationships in Europe and with the United States in the best and broadest interests of the Irish people".
Fine Gael, Labour, the Green Party and Sinn Féin all dismissed the document as an attempt to mislead.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, said the Government's first year had been marked by "a litany of broken promises, mismanaged finances and a raft of new stealth taxes that hit hardest when your income is lowest". Low points of the year had included the restriction of the Freedom of Information Act; the introduction of "stealth taxes and charges that cost a typical household up to €1,830 per year", prices rising to the highest level in the euro zone; rising crime and 4,000 extra people on health waiting lists in the past year.
Mr Rabbitte said: "The people know that they were misled and there is unprecedented anger out there. No amount of carefully orchestrated press conferences or photo-opportunities will alter that."
The Green Party chairman, Mr John Gormley, said the voters knew they were "duped at the election and no amount of spin can deny the fact that the people were lied to".
Sinn Féin's Dáil leader, Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, said Fianna Fáil's traditional commitment to the role of the State, the provision of social housing and neutrality had been shredded by the PDs and their allies in the right wing of the Fianna Fáil leadership.