ECONOMY:THE GOVERNMENT "cannot cut" its way out of the recession, finance spokesman Pearse Doherty told the Sinn Féin ardfheis when supporting motions rejecting a policy of "austerity and cutbacks".
Mr Doherty told delegates in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on Saturday that there was money available in the national pension reserve fund – “even after all the bank bailouts” – that must be used to create jobs and assist “hard-pressed families”.
He said that every week Irish banks were using taxpayers’ money to pay off bondholders that provided speculative loans to Irish banks during the boom.
“Sinn Féin will continue to argue against the use of taxpayer’s money to pay private sector banking debts. Not a single cent more should be used for this purpose,” he said.
He said Sinn Féin would focus on job creation by methods such as investing in labour intensive capital infrastructure projects, establishing a youth jobs fund to create 20,000 jobs for under-25s, abolishing the universal social charge and introducing refundable tax credits for more than 240,000 people. It also proposed to introduce a wealth tax to “ensure those most able to pay will make their rightful contribution to the recovery”.
Dublin Central TD Mary Lou McDonald said despite being in opposition for more than a decade, the Fine Gael/Labour Government had “absolutely no plan for economic recovery”.
“Instead we have Fianna Fáil policies being delivered by Fine Gael and Labour to meet targets set by the EU and IMF to pay back people who gambled and lost on the international markets.”
Cavan-Monaghan TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said hospital waiting lists were growing because of “savage cutbacks” by the last government and extended by the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition.
“Patients on trolleys must wait. And they must wait even longer because of the €1 billion cut from the health and children budget for 2011. But bondholders in toxic banks can’t wait.”
Newry and Armagh MP and Assembly member Conor Murphy said Ireland’s “economic misfortune” was “deepened by the fact that we have two states, two different taxation systems, two currencies and a raft of barriers to mobility and integration in Ireland”.
