THE Progressive Democrats have been accused of lying to the electorate by Minister of State Ms Joan Burton.
After three years in Government, she said, the Labour's Party's record on the economy was far better than that of the Progressive Democrats, with lower interest rates, lower public spending as a percentage of GNP and higher employment.
The Progressive Democrats had promised to cut public spending before entering government with Fianna Fail in 1989 and the party had failed, for three successive years, to reduce the share of GNP spent by the State by any significant factor. Now, Ms Burton said, the party was again launching an economic policy with wild promises of further doses of "liberation for taxpayers".
Modern societies, with their complex demands for investment in education, industry and security, depended for their operation on a high level of public spending, and parties which claimed they had a formula to reverse this were "fundamentally dishonest". They were, in fact, "lying to the voters". Labour would be happy to compare its three year record in office under any heading with that of the Progressive Democrats in the previous three years.
Ms Burton said that anyone who argued for more resources to be devoted to social justice, to health care, to education, to housing, and to child care always met the standard response: "Wait until the national cake is bigger." But now that the national cake was bigger and was growing at an exceptional rate, were they to deny those long suppressed needs?