Rabbitte sets out 10-point plan

The Labour Party has set unveiled 10 actions it says it will take in the first 100 days of office if in Government after the …

The Labour Party has set unveiled 10 actions it says it will take in the first 100 days of office if in Government after the general election.

Top of the list is the cancellation of plans to build private clinics in the grounds of public hospitals.

In a joint document in January, entitled Better Health, the Labour and Fine Gael said the Government had embarked on "a deeply flawed" approach to expanding private bed numbers on public lands using tax breaks for developers.

Mr Rabbitte's 10-point plan also includes:

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  • Instructing the HSE to identify locations for additional hospital beds;
  • Appointing a director to roll out a programme to deliver pre-school education, based in the Office of the Minster for Children;
  • Implementing a civilianisation programme in the Garda and deploying 1,000 additional community gardaí;
  • Abolishing the means test for carers in the first budget after the election;
  • Instructing the National Treasury Management Agency to establish a fund for the "Begin to Buy Scheme";
  • Creating a Department of Energy, Climate Change and the Environment;
  • Publishing a Bill to set the 0.7 per cent of GNP for overseas development aid in law;
  • Instructing Dublin Bus to order first tranche of new buses; and
  • Doubling the capitation fees for primary schools for the 2007/2008 school year.

"The election is now upon us and the message I would like to send out to the Irish people is that I have made my plans for government, and we're ready, if the Labour Party is returned to government," Mr Rabbitte said in a statement.

"The plan I have set out for the first 100 days of the new government make clear that we intend to move quickly in government to make a set of changes that will begin to have an immediate effect on all our quality of life."