The Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, has strongly rejected Fianna Fáil allegations that Labour has condoned illegal protests against bin charges led by Socialist Party TD, Mr Joe Higgins. Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent, reports.
In a sharply-worded attack yesterday, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, called on Mr Rabbitte "to stop dithering and unequivocally" condemn Mr Higgins.
Mr Higgins and his Socialist Party colleague, Cllr Clare Daly, were sentenced to a month in jail last Friday for defying a court injunction against obstructing bin lorries in protest against refuse collection charges in the Fingal council area.
Mr O'Donoghue said: "It is time for the leader of the Labour Party to say whether elected representatives as legislators have a responsibility to uphold the law, not undermine it.
"The stark reality is that if people are allowed to turn up their noses at court orders whenever it suits their agenda, we will have anarchy in this country, not a functioning democracy," he continued. The Labour Party is adopting a "softly, softly" approach because of its fear that the party will lose out in working-class constituencies in next year's local elections to Sinn Féin and the Socialist Party, Mr O'Donoghue alleged.
Replying, the Labour leader accused Mr O'Donoghue of "buffoonery".
"He would be better employed on the position of his own party in relation to issues like respect for the rule of law. I have never advocated non-payment of legal charges, I do not advocate the blockading of housing estates or illegal interfering with local authority vehicles, and I do not support the tactics employed in this protest," said Mr Rabbitte.
This position was made clear by Mr Rabbitte in an interview with the Waterford local radio station, WLR, yesterday morning, broadcast before Mr O'Donoghue's attack was launched.
Local authorities had legally imposed service charges from the 1980s, even though he acknowledged that Labour councillors in Dublin voted against them, said Mr Rabbitte.
Accepting the logic of service charges, he went on: "There was indeed a time when the PAYE worker was so heavily penalised in terms of carrying tax burden that people objected to additional charges at that time.
"The situation has changed dramatically. Taxes have been seriously reduced.
"I don't like the manner in which some of those decisions have been taken because they benefit the highest earners rather than concentrating from the bottom-up. But having said that, you can't argue that the tax burden has not been reduced with any comparison in Europe," he said, while the European Union's "polluter pays" principle equally justifies the charges.
"There are more and more households that understand that we can't go on producing and disposing waste in the fashion that we did, that we have to bring in measures that are designed to reduce and minimise waste."
The jailing, however, of Mr Higgins and Ms Daly had to be contrasted with the failure to jail industrialists for the rampant illegal dumping that had taken place in Co Wicklow.
"Corporates have been dumping indiscriminately and, as yet, nobody has been arraigned before the courts for the disgraceful dumping in a beautiful county like Wicklow," said Mr Rabbitte.
In addition, the treatment meted out to Mr Higgins and Cllr Daly could be compared with the failure to prosecute those "who have obstructed justice, lied to tribunals and evaded tax".
Mr O'Donoghue had nothing to say about the activities of Mr Charles J. Haughey, Mr Liam Lawlor and other senior Fianna Fáil figures who had appeared before tribunals, Mr Rabbitte said. "His press releases on the subject of planning corruption in Dublin, led by his own party, have been notable by their absence. There is no record of Minister O'Donoghue fulminating against farmers who blockaded meat plants in defiance of court orders, even though he was Minister for Justice at the time," said Mr Rabbitte.