Success of economy will be election issue - Ahern

The success of the economy will be the dominant issue on the doorsteps in the forthcoming elections, despite the recent negative fallout from issues such as the Sheedy affair, the Taoiseach has said.

Launching Fianna Fail's local election campaign yesterday, Mr Ahern said poll figures of 46 per cent for Fianna Fail and 58 per cent for himself were disappointing "by my own high standards".

He promised to "work on it", but also joked that when his popularity rating was 70 and 80 per cent, it wasn't headline news: "At least I'm back on the front page again."

He predicted that when the election campaigns got under way, the Government's record of achievement over the past two years would come back into focus, especially in areas like employment.

"We've created 95,000 new jobs, reduced long-term employment by 40,000 and pushed unemployment down to 6.8 per cent, well below the EU average and the lowest in 16 years."

The Taoiseach added that the local government reforms being introduced by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, would restore "real decision-making" to local level and give better service to the public.