Fine Gael leader Simon Harris has rejected the idea that a left-wing alliance of more than one party could join a coalition government with his party and Fianna Fáil after next week’s general election.
Asked about the idea put forward by Labour leader Ivana Bacik and Greens leader Roderic O’Gorman that a left-wing alliance of their two parties and the Social Democrats could agree a platform among themselves and then open negotiations with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil after the election, Mr Harris said he wanted to see a coalition of no more than three parties.
“I don’t think anyone wants to see a coalition with four, five or six parties in it,” Mr Harris told The Irish Times Inside Politics podcast.
“I think that wouldn’t be good at this moment in time. I think we need a stable government,” he said. “I’m currently leading and managing a three-party coalition. We’ve managed to deliver five budgets ... but you start adding in four and five parties, I think that’s not very stable.”
Mr Harris praised the Greens’ contribution in Government – “in particular in public transport” – and also said the Labour Party had made “constructive suggestions” about housing.
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But he was critical of the Social Democrats for ruling out tax cuts, saying, “That’s the equivalent of saying there will be tax rises.”
Mr Harris again ruled out any chance of a coalition deal with Sinn Féin. “That’s not to say I’m being pejorative or rude, it’s just genuinely being honest. We have policy differences that we won’t go in with them on, on those grounds.”
Mr Harris also reiterated his commitment to tax cuts as a way of helping people with cost-of-living pressures.
“What I’m definitely, definitely, definitely hearing from people ... and I don’t like that label, ‘squeezed middle’, but it’s real,” he said. “I mean, there’s a lot of people out there who are saying: ‘Look, Simon, I’m working hard, I’m playing by the rules, and I’m still struggling to find ends meet.’”
[ Simon Harris Q&A: ‘We have the money and we have the plans to really make great inroads’ ]
Mr Harris said he had to be “truthful” with the Irish people and acknowledge that the “global economic environment in which we’re living is obviously volatile at the moment” following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
“Trump 2024 is I think a very different situation to the first Trump presidency,” Mr Harris said. “Firstly, the world is different. The world is very different. The political composition, even of Europe, is different.
“Secondly, the mandate president Trump has received – and he has received a mandate, regardless of people’s political views – the mandate he’s received is much stronger.
“And thirdly, if it’s not too undiplomatic to say, this is a president now who knows how to use the levers of the US government. He’s no longer new to the political system. And it looks like, based on the cabinet picks that he’s choosing, and it’s his right to choose whoever he wishes to be in his cabinet, that he does seem quite determined to advance that agenda from a trade perspective.”
However, Mr Harris said he was “not all doom and gloom about this”.
“I believe we can overcome these challenges. I think the US and the EU needed each other before the presidential election, will need each other after the presidential election. There are lots of bad actors in the world. It makes sense for the US and the EU to work together to trade.”
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