Gilmore rules out coalition with FF

Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore has firmly ruled out a coalition with Fianna Fáil after the next general election.

Speaking in Galway this afternoon, where he canvassed with European and local election candidates, Mr Gilmore said that he would be appealing to Labour Party voters on June 5th to "use their transfer to vote against the Government".

Mr Gilmore welcomed the results of today's Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll, which gave him the highest satisfaction rating (51 per cent) of five party leaders and recorded Labour at 20 per cent, down four per cent on a previous poll.

Based on these results, Mr Gilmore said, it was "time to embrace more than just new personnel, but a change in direction, in policies".

A "new vision" which was based on values of fairness and equality, rather than monetary income, was urgently required, Mr Gilmore said. He believed that a "collective intelligence", a new "collective spirit" and a "great re-evaluation" by the public was not being embraced by the Government.

Reiterating his call on Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael party leaders to engage in a national debate before the June vote, Mr Gilmore said that the public was owed this as national issues were dominating the European and local election campaigns. Mr Cowen's "bunker mentality" to his appeal was disappointing, he said.

The Green Party's recent confirmation that it would not ask its voters to transfer to Fianna Fáil "signaled the first steps in an exit strategy" by the Greens from coalition government, Mr Gilmore said.

Earlier this month, Green Party chairman Dan Boyle and Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan said that they would not ask party members to vote for their government partner.

Mr Gilmore predicted that his party would take four seats in the European elections and would make "huge gains" in the local elections, based on the results of successive opinion polls which showed his party holding at 20 per cent.

Earlier today, Mr Gilmore reiterated his call for nationalisation of the banks at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ireland conference in Galway. The first requirement for restoring national confidence was vision, and a sense of direction, he said.

"A lot of economics is a confidence trick. We can all see what happens when it evaporates," Mr Gilmore told the ICAI membership.

"What is happening in Ireland right now is what John Maynard Keynes called 'the paradox of thrift'. People are frightened. They are worried about their jobs, worried about their homes, wondering how much more of the pay packet is going to be taken off them next month," he said.

"In March alone, lending by the banks by non-financial corporates fell by approximately €1 billion. This is a clear indication of how the banking crisis is having its impact on business," Mr Gilmore said. The banking crisis must be taken extremely seriously, and Labour had been proved right in its response last year to the Government's bail-out of the banks.

Referring to the latest forecast by the ESRI, Mr Gilmore said that a decline of one tenth in national income was "an enormous shock".

"But our capacity to recover from it, and to begin to grow again, to create new jobs, will depend on having a functioning banking system," he said. Nationalisation was not part of "any ideological agenda", but was the view of a wide range of economists across the political spectrum, he said.

He also criticised the delay in and expense of creating the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA). Describing it as "An Bord Bailout", Mr Gilmore predicted that NAMA would not work until there was legislation in place to support it.

"Meanwhile, further economic and financial damage is being done," Mr Gilmore told accountants. "What incentive do borrowers have to deal with their banks, when they have the prospect of getting a better deal from NAMA?"

Later, Mr Gilmore joined his party's European election candidate in the North-West constituency, Susan O'Keeffe, and city and county local election candidates on a canvas in the city, and in Oranmore, Loughrea and Ballinasloe.