Fine Gael and Labour are building a two-tier recovery in the same ways that "Fianna Fáil built a two-tier Celtic Tiger", Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty has claimed.
He said: “when the crash came it exposed the lie that was the Celtic Tiger - Fianna Fáil hadn’t discovered the recipe for economic success. They built an economy on inequality and risk.”
Speaking at the party’s ardfheis in Derry he said that “instead of providing a real alternative they are implementing the same failed policies as their predecessors”.
“Just as Fianna Fáil built a two tier Celtic Tiger so Fine Gael and Labour are building a two tier recovery.”
During a debate on “delivering a fair recovery” delegates backed a motion supporting the devolution of corporation tax varying powers to the Assembly in the North.
The motion also called on the party’s national executive or ard chomhairle to carefully consider any variation in in tax rates to ensure increased revenue “advantages the local economy”.
A motion from the Clancy/O’Callaghan cumann in Limerick calling for more effective implementation of the current rates of corporation tax fell.
Delegate Shane Ó Ceallaigh, speaking in favour of more effective use of the existing corporation tax said “I don’t think anyone in this hall joined Sinn Féin to campaign for a lower corporation tax rate yet this appears to be what we are doing”.
He questioned whether a party of the left should be signing up to the having of the corporation tax rate for the benefit of a handful of multinationals while public service jobs were being lost because of the Westminster block cuts.
“Cutting corporation tax does not create jobs, it just creates more profit for multinationals.”
Mr Doherty said the party “will remove the veto from the banks, give greater protection to family homes and reduce the bankruptcy term from three years down to one.”
And delegates accepted a motion “that the bankruptcy legislation should be harmonised North and South”. In the North bankruptcy lasts one year compared to the current three years in the South.
Addressing a capacity audience at the at the city’s Millennium Forum, Mr Doherty said “the test or a real recovery is not rising GDP or falling bond yields it is whether people’s lives are getting better or are they getting worse”.
“FG and Labour may be delivering a recovery for some but for far, far too many things are getting worse.”
He said that people with money and wealth could secure quicker access to better resourced services. “The rest of us had to get in line.”
The Donegal South West TD said that since 2011 Sinn Féin “has shown that with the right policies social and economic recovery is achievable.
“Our costed alternative budgets offer real choices. FG and Labour refuse to listen. They set their face against fairness. The next government can do things differently and we definitely need a change of direction.”
Cllr Kathleen Funchion, the party's candidate in the Carlow-Kilkenny byelection, said the anger over the water charges showed people had had enough of austerity and of the Government's "nonsense talk that we're all in this together".
A Cavan delegate got one of the loudest cheers and most prolonged applause when he compared Rip Van Winkle waking up in 1918 after 50 years’ sleep to an Ireland in 2018 where Gerry Adams was president, Martin McGuinness was the first minister in the North, “finance rockstar” Pearse Doherty was minister for finance in the south and Mary Lou McDonald was the first female taoiseach.
