The Labour Party has strongly defended its time in Government after 2011, saying that if Fine Gael had governed alone there would have been “permanently reduced public services, lower rates of wages and welfare” and the “privatisation of public assets”.
The three-part review into the party’s time in government contains stinging criticism of its former coalition partner Fine Gael.
On Thursday, The Irish Times revealed that the confidential document said that Labour failed to maintain public trust, mishandled key policy decisions, ran badly judged publicity stunts and agreed to legislation which was damaging to democracy.
While some of the report delved into the party’s failures post-2011, there is also a strong defence of its time in government.
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It states that if Fine Gael had governed without Labour, the ideology of the Fine Gael 2011 manifesto would have resulted in “permanently reduced public services, lower rates of wages and welfare, the privatisation of public assets as well as possible attacks on trade union rights. Such policies would have brought about much greater economic inequality as a result, as has occurred in countries like the UK and the USA”.
The private report, which is the subject of internal controversy within the party, said Labour had “blocked” the “more extreme Fine Gael proposals for deeper cuts to public spending and social welfare, as well as privatisation”.
[ Analysis: Is the Labour Party ready to face up to the past?Opens in new window ]
The report, compiled by the party’s executive between the leadership of Brendan Howlin and Alan Kelly, argues that Fine Gael wanted to privatise State assets, “whereas Labour wished to retain them in public ownership”.
“In the end, while some public assets were sold, Labour prevented some major sales. For example, Labour arranged that rather than privatise ESB, its international wing sold two profitable power stations abroad and used the revenue to pay over €1 billion in dividends to the government, while remaining in public ownership. Thus, while those privatisations that took place (notably the sale of the State’s remaining minority shareholding in Aer Lingus, the majority having been sold by the FF/PD government in 2006) diminished public wealth, State assets remained largely intact compared to what happened in Greece, Spain or Portugal.”
It says Fine Gael’s manifesto commitment to abolish 145 State bodies and companies “would have seriously diminished public services”.
“However, these policies were largely prevented due to Labour’s presence in the coalition government.”
The party also claims in the review that Labour had prevented “a strategy of wage devaluation that was sought by Fine Gael and had been imposed in other programme countries, which prolonged their recessions due to the loss of aggregate demand in their economies that led in turn to reduced employment and reduced tax revenue”.
“On the contrary, in Ireland, household incomes rose every year during Labour’s time in government.”
However, the review is also critical of the role that Labour played in certain policies and schemes.
For example, it finds that while the JobBridge scheme, introduced in 2011 as an attempt to help those entering the labour market, “was at odds with the core Labour principle of ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’. Moreover, the public-facing aspect of the scheme was poorly implemented as the absence of a proper vetting system allowed exploitative posts to be advertised on the JobBridge website.”
Among the key findings of the report into the party’s time in Government between 2011 and 2016 are: that Labour should have done more to help the most vulnerable; that there was a “major misstep” made around single-parent policies; that the party would have been almost as unpopular if it had governed on its own; that Labour was part of a government that badly handled a medical card entitlement review; and that the party listened too much to “experts”.
