A chara, – In “Fiscal Council report challenges new politics” (June 10th), Arthur Beesley describes Sinn Féin as “an election-time convert to the fiscal rules”. I am happy to clarify the party’s position. Incidentally, I agree with much of the spirit of the article.
Sinn Féin is opposed to the fiscal rules – they are in effect austerity rules limiting the options for countries to protect the most vulnerable during downturns and to make the important investment in services and infrastructure during better times.
My party campaigned openly and vigorously against the rules during the referendum on the so-called fiscal stability treaty. We were opposed to these rules then and remain so now.
And we have been proved right. One need only look at the desperate scramble to find “off balance sheet” special purpose vehicles to fund the building of social housing in the State to see the effects of the rules. It is these rules that are limiting investment in our economy. Ibec is among the latest organisations to see this and to call for flexibility. Irish Water is another case in point – a vehicle contrived to circumvent these rules but which failed.
This State has the ability to access funds to buy or build housing for its residents but it is artificially constrained from doing so by these rules. An even starker fact is that it is only because Eurostat disagreed with the State’s classification of a €1.5 billion share transaction at AIB that this State could this year provide the much-needed injection into our health system announced recently.
These rules have the potential, as Sinn Féin said they would, to cripple our ability to provide services and invest in our infrastructure. Economically and politically they are bad rules. They need to change, as we outlined in our manifesto. Sinn Féin would seek support for changes at an EU level and “in the shorter term we will work to achieve the type of flexibilities to these rules that have been afforded to other states within the EU”.
There is a growing consensus that the rules do not work and must be changed and changed significantly.
The rules do of course allow some choices for a government, as much as Fine Gael and Labour might like to have presented it otherwise. Each year Sinn Féin have produced an alternative budget consistent with the fiscal rules. The fiscal rules are, unfortunately, the law of the land. Indeed it was shown quite conclusively during the election campaign that Sinn Féin was the only party that understood the rules and stuck to them. We are not converts; we are a political party in a State where these rules apply.
Arthur Beesley is right – some politicians do not grasp the import of what the Fiscal Council has said, not just in its latest report, but consistently. The council’s mandate is to make sure the rules are implemented; no more, no less.
As a political party Sinn Féin has that responsibility until changes can be made but also has a responsibility to offer realistic, costed proposals. We never have and never will “wave away the council’s observations”. – Is mise,
PEARSE DOHERTY TD,
Sinn Féin
Finance Spokesman,
Leinster House, Dublin 2.