OPPOSITION:LABOUR LEADER Eamon Gilmore will today demand in the Dáil that the Government provide time this week to debate his party's motion of no confidence in the Coalition.
Mr Gilmore will raise the matter with Taoiseach Brian Cowen during this evening’s Order of Business, which will precede the vote on the confidence motion at the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting.
Mr Cowen is expected to vigorously reject the demand, which would mean the motion being debated next week in Labour’s Private Member’s Time.
A Labour spokesman said last night it was “a precedent throughout the decades’’ that the government of the day provided time for an Opposition motion of no confidence to be debated.
Government Chief Whip John Curran has dismissed the Labour motion as “a meaningless political stunt’’, and has ruled out Government time being made available.
Fine Gael initially described the motion as “ill-advised and badly timed’’, and criticised Labour for offering Fianna Fáil a chance to unite at a time of turmoil.
A Fine Gael spokesman said last night that if the Government responded with a motion of confidence in itself, his party would oppose it.
“In the next 24 hours the Government’s situation has to clarify itself, and Fine Gael will examine every parliamentary procedure to remove the Coalition.’’
Fine Gael finance spokesman Michael Noonan claimed that the Fianna Fáil leadership battle was distracting Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan from a crucial EU policy shift on the EU-IMF bailout for Ireland.
He said on RTÉ news that Mr Lenihan had sought to talk up the possibility of renegotiating downward the 5.8 per cent interest rate at which the money was lent.
“As late as last Wednesday, in reply to a question in the Dáil from me, the Minister was doing the exact opposite.’’
He said he had put it to Mr Lenihan that an incoming government would seek to negotiate a more favourable interest rate, but the Minister had been utterly dismissive in his reply, indicating clearly that this was not possible.
Mr Lenihan, he said, had insisted that the interest rate, and the total amount that must be secured over the programme period of three years, were fixed by the agreement. “The Minister made this assertion at a time when everyone who was seriously keeping in touch with policy changes on these matters in Europe knew that the door was being opened for renegotiation.’’