Sinn Féin ‘eager for place’ in Government

SINN FÉIN is keen to become a junior coalition partner in Government, the party’s finance spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin indicated yesterday.

Sinn Féin has abandoned its proposal though to nationalise the country’s biggest banks by buying them out at the taxpayers’ expense.

The expression by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, that it was only a matter of time before Sinn Féin entered into Government, has heightened the focus on the party’s policies.

Sinn Féin’s longest serving TD said that his party remained committed to doubling Capital Gains Tax to 40%, and up to 60% on property speculation, and also wanted to increase Corporation Tax from its present rate of 12.5%.

Sinn Féin also wants to see a new income tax band of 50% introduced on incomes in excess of €100,000, allied to the removal of minimum wage earners from the tax net, Deputy Ó Caoláin said.

“We recognise that as a party presenting our particular Programme for Government that the prospect of Sinn Féin being a single party Government in the foreseeable future is remote. In any and all of this, it would be down to negotiation with other parties if we choose to go into a coalition arrangement,” the Cavan-Monaghan TD said.

Sinn Féin’s economic policies would involve an immediate increase of almost €5 billion per annum in State spending, according to a recent analysis by the Irish Examiner of the party’s policy documents.

Economists say the party’s expenditure policies would invariably necessitate significant increases in tax.

Notwithstanding the policy differences with the main parties, Deputy Ó Caoláin said on RTÉ’s This Week that Sinn Féin is interested in entering into a coalition Government.

“To give effect to what we would like to see happen, certainly we will have to find, at some point in time in the future, a place to make that difference and that can only be found in Government itself,” he said.

Although ruling out wanting to bring the banks or other major industries into State ownership, Deputy Ó Caoláin said the enormous profits generated by the banks could unquestionably be better used for the benefit of the country.

“That is not a firm proposition we are putting forward and it won’t be a part of our general election manifesto,” he said.

Yet before the last general election, Deputy Ó Caoláin told the Irish Examiner that nationalising the big banks would be an item on his agenda.

Outlining the policies he would implement if he became Minister for Finance, just ahead of Budget 2002, he said he would nationalise the big banks. Economists analysing the party’s economic proposals at the time said the cost of the move would probably double the national debt.