The Labour Party has today challenged Fianna Fáil to explain how it intends to fund its economic promises for the next five years.
Announcing the costings of its six election pledges, party leader Mr Ruairi Quinn said Labour intended to borrow money to support capital investment programmes such as the National Development Plan.
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Mr Ruairi Quinn
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He also announced plans to reverse last year’s reduction in employers’ PRSI to bring an additional €400 million into the exchequer, reduce the contribution to the National Pension Reserve Fund by three quarters to retain €5 billion for capital investment, and prevent the general government deficit exceeding 1.9 per cent.
Mr Quinn said "the crisis in the National Development Plan is the greatest threat to our economic priorities" and promised "significant expenditure increases" to deal with the problem. "This is going to have to be the decade of investment," he said.
Mr Quinn also criticised what he called Fianna Fáil's unwillingness to cost their election commitments.
He said the Minister for Finance Mr Charlie McCreevy had all but disappeared from public debate on the issue, and insisted the question of how much money Fianna Fáil would borrow must be answered before the general election.
Labour spokesperson on finance Mr Derek McDowell said Fianna Fáil had a "habit of promising all things to all people, with no price attached."
He said Fianna Fáil had promised more Gardaí, better pensions, more education funding and major improvements in the health system under the National Health Strategy.
But Mr McDowell said "the politics of self-delusion is bad for the economy, and its bad for politics, because it breeds justifiable cynicism in the electorate."
Mr McDowell challenged Mr McCreevy to debate the matter "any time, any place" and said Fianna Fáil "must be flushed out on this and other issues".