The Taoiseach has pledged to increase the old age pension to €200 a week in the lifetime of the next government, and to introduce a full pension for stay-at-home spouses.
Unveiling a number of pre-election commitments in his ardfheis speech, Mr Ahern also promised to set up a new Department of Transport. "Because delivering infrastructure will be a key strategic focus, the national roads programme and public transport will be brought together," he said.
He pledged to keep spending "on a tight rein" and said that recourse to Exchequer borrowing or increasing taxes was unacceptable.
At the same time, he made a series of major spending commitments. In government, he said, Fianna Fáil would invest in new social policies; spend more on transport; recruit 2,000 extra gardaí; implement the biggest hospital building programme in the State's history; deliver high-standard school buildings; create more teaching posts; build the national stadium; improve pensions and leave the long-term National Pensions Fund untouched.
The Taoiseach hailed the Government's record, saying Government policies had brought long-term unemployment down from 86,000 to fewer than 22,000. Crime had fallen by 27 per cent and personal taxes by more than in any other government's lifetime.
He said that if Fianna Fáil was re-elected, investment in all forms of transport would far exceed anything experienced in the past. "The new Department of Transport, building on the foundations already laid will be charged with delivering on target our already ambitious plans. It will also develop new innovative solutions for the future." He pledged to end traffic congestion by the end of this decade.
He promised a proceeds of corruption Act to deal with white-collar crime, along the lines of existing legislation dealing with the proceeds of crime. The party would introduce drugs-testing of prisoners and would require drug-dealers to register with the Garda after they left prison.
He received the loudest and longest cheer of his speech when he committed the party to "building a national sports stadium where the talented young people nurtured on sports fields in communities across our country can fulfil their dreams at home in Ireland".
He said the alternative was an Opposition which offered inbuilt instability if they were to have the opportunity to form a government. Theirs would be a government "where the office of Taoiseach will be won with a game of musical chairs".
The Opposition's vision belonged in the 1980s, he went on. "Their formula is to raise taxes - raise taxes, reduce revenue, deter investment and destroy jobs.