Fitzgerald accuses ex-minister over rising prices

Fianna Fáil’s mishandling of budgets at the turn of the millennium has driven up Ireland’s consumer prices, former Taoiseach Garrett FitzGerald said today.

The ex-Fine Gael leader, who led two governments in the 1980s, claimed former minister for finance Charlie McCreevy’s management of the economy around 2000 boosted the cost of goods and services.

Dr FitzGerald, 70, said: “We moved within three or four years from being the lowest-cost country in Western Europe to being the highest-cost country.

“Prices here are now very much higher than almost any other country. It’s quite astonishing when you look at the international comparisons and see the difference.”

The former CD economics lecturer added: “The underlying situation is that we are not competitive in the way we were. We lost that because of the mishandling of the budgets at the turn of the Millennium by McCreevy. So we really have a problem here to try to get this right.”

Dr Fitzgerald also told TV3’s Ireland AM programme that striking a deal between employers and unions in the social partnership talks, which begin today, would be very difficult.

As the National Wage Agreement negotiations open, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is set to argue that workers must be compensated for rising prices but employers will stress that profits are being eroded by rising international oil prices and other factors.

Mr McCreevy, who exited the cabinet as minister for finance in autumn 2004 when he became the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, delivered seven budgets after coming to office in 1997.