Sinn Féin has called for the Dáil to be recalled early because of what it described as "an unprecedented public finance crisis".
Speaking on the second day of the party's strategic meeting in Howth, Co Dublin, Sinn Féin's national chairwoman, Dublin MEP Mary Lou McDonald, contended that Taoiseach Brian Cowen needed to be visible and give clarity to the economic situation the country is now facing.
She was responding to both to yestrday's Exchequer figures for August and to the latest Central Statistic Office figures which show that unemployment has risen to almost 250,000.
"I think it has not been lost that the summer has just drifted by and we are in a state of almost suspended animation," she said.
"We are in the eye of the storm and yet where has the political leadership been? It has simply been absent."
Ms McDonald said that two major issues that were pivotal in the Lisbon Treaty campaign – the protection of vulnerable workers and tax sovereignty – needed to be guaranteed at European level immediately.
"We are saying that as a matter of urgency, rather than daydreaming about future referendums or getting Lisbon through the back door through the Oireachtas, the Government needs to go and at an EU level secure measures that secure our position on taxation and equally secure vulnerable workers from exploitation."
Low-paid workers should not bear the brunt of any cut-backs, said the Dublin MEP, who also called for anti-inflation measures to be introduced.
Sinn Féin is developing a new economics policy which it will publish in the run-up to December's Budge. However, Ms McDonald said that there was strong consensus that State borrowing would have to increase in the short-term.
"That debate is almost closed. There is almost universal acceptance that we can't be bound by the strictures of European borrowing levels," she said.
