TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen has dismissed as a “manufactured story” the controversy surrounding Tánaiste Mary Coughlan’s criticisms of the McCarthy report.
Mr Cowen also expressed his full confidence in Ms Coughlan, describing her as as an “excellent Minister, hard-working and a very good member of Cabinet”. He dismissed any contention that her position had become untenable.
Mr Cowen, who was visiting the National Ploughing Championship in Co Kildare yesterday, was responding to conflicting remarks made about the McCarthy report by senior members of his Cabinet while he attended the UN General Assembly meeting in New York earlier this week. The report recommends some €5.4 billion of cuts in public expenditure.
Ms Coughlan told the Dáil on Wednesday that there were many recommendations in the McCarthy report that did not make sense.
Yesterday Mr Cowen, in his first public engagement since returning from the United States, denied that the Government was in disarray.
In comments that were seen as an attempt to draw a line under the controversy he said: “I think this is a manufactured story to be honest. There is no serious difference of opinion in relation to what the overall budgetary stance is. There is a lot of political discussion at Cabinet about the details of how we proceed,” he said.
“This issue as I understand it arose in relation to one particular recommendation of many hundreds that are in the report. Suddenly that was catapulted into a story that we were not going to take any cognisance at all of the McCarthy report. That is simply not correct. Perhaps people should not take the Fine Gael feed quite as uncritically as they did yesterday,” he said.
The Tánaiste also moved to clarify her remarks yesterday. She told the Dáil that the McCarthy report provided options, but that other alternatives might be considered. “The bottom line is that €4 billion of cuts will have to be found [in the budget],” she said.
Ms Coughlan was the third Minister to criticise the McCarthy report, following strong comments by Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism Martin Cullen and Minister for Rural, Community and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív. The McCarthy report recommended the abolition of both their departments.
Mr Cowen denied that there was a rift or serious divergences of view within the Cabinet over McCarthy.
“I can’t understand how [people have] jumped to that conclusion based on what was said. The question was in relation to a proposal for about €1 million of expenditure out of a total set of recommendations totalling €5.4 billion,” he said.
“The analysis that’s now being made that that suggests the McCarthy report will now not form part of our deliberations is simply untrue. There is no basis for that. It was never said.”
When pressed on his interpretations of Ms Coughlan’s reference to “many recommendations”, Mr Cowen insisted that her remarks were directed at the specific recommendation that rural Garda stations be closed.
Mr Ó Cuív said yesterday there was no real contradiction between Ms Coughlan and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan on the McCarthy report because “they are both right”.
Describing the McCarthy report on public expenditure as "a menu", the Minister told the News at Oneprogramme on RTÉ Radio there were good ideas in it and others that were not practicable.
“What the Tánaiste said yesterday, what the Ministers have been saying, what the Taoiseach and the Minister of Finance have been saying consistently is that those people who think that we will just take the whole of McCarthy and implement it exactly as he wrote it would be wrong.
“There are a lot of good ideas in it, there are ideas that are not practicable, and it’s up to us to come up with alternative ideas if we believe, as line ministers and as a Cabinet, that some of the proposals there are just not workable.”
Earlier, Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar told the Morning IrelandRTÉ Radio programme: "The problem here really is that you have a Government in disarray." Pointing to utterances from Ministers he said: "You have one side of the Government saying there'll be no tax increases and the other side saying that spending cuts don't make any sense."