PD party president and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell yesterday launched an attack on a possible alternative rainbow coalition involving Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens, describing it as a "slump coalition" that was planning to increase taxes.
He was speaking at the Progressive Democrats parliamentary party day-long party "think-in" in Dublin.
Mr McDowell claimed that Labour in government would introduce a property tax, and that party leader Pat Rabbitte had proposed one in February 2003 when he suggested a wealth tax.
He also claimed the Green Party was in favour of increasing taxes, but that the parties were not telling potential voters of such plans.
"Let's not have this business of running an ideology in secret which you unveil when you claim it is economically necessary to impose a new tax due to unforeseen circumstances," he said.
"People have to, I think, be given a fair and square insight into what the instincts of people who seek their political support actually are."
He claimed that a wealth tax was "in the bottom drawer of the slump coalition and it will be taken out when ideology permits".
He also claimed that Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny was making a big mistake by ruling out the PDs as potential coalition partners.
"If Enda Kenny wants to say that we are unsuitable as partners for government he should ask his own party members who they would prefer, because surveys showed that they prefer the Progressive Democrats to the Greens and the other partners that they have sought in the past. Let them go ahead, but their voters will desert them in droves."
Party leader Mary Harney, when discussing the Groceries Order, which she said should be abolished, said that the PDs would be putting this to their Government colleagues, in the context of a review of the measure, which was announced by Minister for Enterprise Micheál Martin in June.
She also defended her own failure as minister for enterprise and trade to have the order abolished, saying she would have been prevented from doing so between 1997 and 2002 because the government was reliant on independent TDs at the time who supported the measure then.
She cited the Consumer Strategy Group report from earlier this year, which she said showed that the order, which bans below-cost selling, was preventing retailers from passing on discounts of up to 20 per cent on groceries.
"I think if people analyse the Groceries Order and its effect on consumers they can only come to one view, that it no longer serves the needs of consumers, if it ever did," she said.