FF move to cost election pledges draws rivals’ fire

The first major clash of the election campaign has been sparked by a Fianna Fáil proposal to have its promises to the electorate independently costed.

At its ardfheis in Dublin, party leader Micheál Martin gave an undertaking to have all Fianna Fáil’s manifesto commitments costed by an independent auditor.

“There will be no auction politics, no uncommitted promises, no proposals which could damage the economy. I challenge other parties to follow our lead.”

The party submitted all its policies to the Department of Finance on Friday to verify the accuracy of their costings. It has also said it will bring in independent auditors to scrutinise its commitments.

“This is an additional step, and means we are putting a triple lock on our commitments,” said a spokesman.

“This Government’s claim about the Opposition being dishonest in making election pledges has zero credibility,” he added.

Fianna Fáil disclosed that accountants PwC would conduct the audit on its policies and its assessment would be published with the party manifesto after the election is called.

Tax expert

The managing partner of PwC is Fergal O’Rourke, a renowned tax expert, who is also the son of former Fianna Fáil minister Mary O’Rourke.

The assertion met with a hail of criticism from rival parties. It was described as a “stunt” and the claim it was a novel departure was also dismissed as “ludicrous”.

Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin separately claimed all their key policy commitments had been independently costed. Fine Gael director of elections Brian Hayes said all parties already had the opportunity to have their proposals costed by the Department of Finance. The Dublin MEP said Fine Gael had its pre-budget submission costed by the department in December 2010 and went on to implement those measures.

‘Triple lock’

In a dismissal of the claim that an additional audit was a “triple lock”, Mr Hayes said: “Fianna Fáil is trying to hoodwink people into believing they can be trusted with the economy.

“Over the past five years they have played populist Opposition politics and now have no policies.”

Responding to Mr Martin's initiative, Labour leader Joan Burton said all Labour Party policies were already based on conservative forecasts from the department.

“On the basis of those we will introduce policies that are affordable and responsible. I want to stress that if there is some unforeseen change in the future, we in Labour will cut our cloth to suit our measure,” she said.

A Labour spokesman added: "Fianna Fáil figures were so bad that they brought the troika into Ireland. Our figures were good enough to send the troika home and we can continue that sound responsible management of the public finances."

The Sinn Féin spokesman said it had submitted costings for all recent policy documents – including budgetary, health and housing policies – to the department.

“The fact is our policies to end water charges and property tax, along with taking 277,000 workers out of USC and introducing a third tax rate, will happen within the existing fiscal space.”