SF attacks 'corrupt' establishment

Sinn Féin has opened its election campaign with a strong attack by party president Gerry Adams on corruption in the political system.

Mr Adams numbered the outgoing Government, the opposition parties apart from Sinn Féin and anyone “complicit” in the country’s economic problems as being corrupt.

However, he refused to name individuals he claimed were corrupt and sought to draw a distinction between those who were “criminally corrupt” and others who were corrupt by virtue of having gone along with the “cosy consensus” in politics.

He said the criminal corrupt would be dealt with by due process in the courts, while other corrupt people were “redeemable” and could be voted out of power.

“There is deep distress out there. The people know the system doesn’t serve them, and that makes it a corrupt system,” Mr Adams said. He was speaking at the launch today of the party’s campaign in the National Gallery, which was attended by its 41 candidates in 38 constituencies.

“There are two Irelands,” he told the gathering. “There is the Ireland of the elites and the mohair suits and the Galway tent and all that came out of Taca, and there is the other Ireland – which is of the people who care, and are decent and fair.”

Mr Adams said Sinn Féin would reverse the Budget cuts and abolish the Universal Social Charge, which he described as a “disgrace”.

The party’s economics spokesman Pearse Doherty said abolishing the USC would cost €420 million. Instead, the party would increase the top rate of tax on people earning over €100,000 to 48 per cent, which would bring in €410 million. He said the Department of Finance had costed this measure.