Oireachtas

Noonan says McCreevy accepts end of duty-free

The Minister for Finance has denied Opposition claims that the Government accepts that the abolition of duty-free sales next …

Thu Jan 29 1998 - 00:00

The Minister for Finance has denied Opposition claims that the Government accepts that the abolition of duty-free sales next year is a fait accompli.

Mr McCreevy conceded, however, that it would be a "mammoth task" to have the decision, reversed. It would have to be unanimous and the European Commission would have to make the proposal to reinstate duty-free.

Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Michael Noonan, said: "It is no surrender, not an inch, duty-free is gone." He told the Dail he had received a letter from the Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, Mr Padraig Flynn, which stated "in the most categoric terms" there would be no departure by the Commission or the Council of Ministers from the decision taken in 1991 to abolish duty-free sales in 1999.

The Minister said he was not "one bit surprised" about the Commission's stance. It had steadfastly refused to carry out a Europe-wide study on the impact of the abolition of duty-free, he added. As far as the Commission was concerned, the decision to abolish duty-free had been made in June 1991 and it wanted to hear no more about it.

READ MORE

Mr Noonan asked the Minister to publish the report he had commissioned on the value of duty-free to Ireland before the by-elections in Dublin North and Limerick East, because both constituencies would be affected by the abolition. Mr McCreevy said he expected the report to be completed next month and he hoped to publish it.

He stressed that Ireland had "led the charge" to reverse the decision.

Mr Noonan suggested that the report was a "rather expensive fig leaf if the position is set in concrete already and you and your colleagues have already decided there is going to be no change".

Labour's finance spokesman, Mr Derek McDowell, said "the Minister is effectively accepting here today that duty-free is gone".

He asked had the Minister discussed the issue with his British counterpart, Mr Gordon Brown, because the only chance of revisiting the matter was through Britain's presidency of the EU.

Mr McCreevy said the British did not consider it as a matter of priority for their presidency. He added, however, that across Europe there was now a wider appreciation of the difficulties the abolition of duty-free was going to cause.

Mr Noonan expressed concern about the impact of the abolition of duty-free on Shannon airport and Mr Jimmy Deenihan (FG, Kerry North) expressed concern about regional airports such as Farranfore in Kerry.