Rabbitte: FG/Lab alliance neck and neck with Coalition

THE Government and the alternative coalition of Fine Gael/Labour are “neck and neck” in terms of voter strength, Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said yesterday.

Mr Rabbitte was speaking as the latest Red C/Sunday Business Post poll showed a post-budget surge of three points for Fianna Fáil to 37%. The Progressive Democrats remained static at 3%.

However, with Fine Gael down four points to 23% and Labour unchanged at 13%, neither the Government nor the alternative coalition would be in a position to form a government without additional support if a general election were held now.

Yesterday’s poll put Sinn Féin down one point at 9%, independents unchanged at 8% and the Green Party up two at 7%.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio, Mr Rabbitte said it was still all to play for. “Overall it’s a position of neck and neck between the Government and the alternative government that will be in place when polling day does eventually come.”

However, he said he did not believe voters were thinking yet of how they would vote in an election still more than a year away.

Nevertheless he said the poll and its indication that just 61 seats or so would go to Fianna Fáil was “very disconcerting” for the party.

“That would be lower even than the election fought under Albert Reynolds, so it’s a very disconcerting situation for the Government after a budget that had a lot of money to give away,” he said.

Mr Rabbitte conceded that with a possible 25 seats at present polling strength, his own party would fall short of what is required to enter Government with Fine Gael. He cast aside any doubt that the alternative coalition would fail to materialise come election time.

“There is no fudge ... for the first time in a very long time, the electorate will have an alternative available to them when polling day comes. They may not chose to support it, but they will have an alternative and that alternative will publish the broad orientation of its political platform for that election.”

Turning on the Government’s record, Mr Rabbitte said the biggest example of financial mismanagement was last week’s Comptroller and Auditor General’s estimation that the cost of the Redress Board scheme for victims of institutional abuse could reach e1.35 billion.

“This is five times what the Government said it would be and a figure which was ridiculed when I advanced it in the Dáil a year and a half ago by the Taoiseach.

“Everybody wanted to see the victims of abuse dealt with, but it is unbelievable that a government could have come along, avoided taking the advice of the Attorney General’s office, avoided normal Cabinet procedures, sent out a man to do a deal in private in the last day of the life of that government, knowing that he wouldn’t be a minister on the next day, and that that went through the Cabinet.”