Rabbitte rejects coalition with FF

LABOUR PARTY leader Pat Rabbitte has said it would make no sense for the party to go into power with Fianna Fáil in a future government.

He defended yesterday his proposal to form a pre-election pact with Fine Gael, and scotched suggestions by some Labour members who believe the party should instead consider a coalition with Fianna Fáil. “I find it a bit difficult to understand why our people... are so unhappy about issues like the health services and public housing, the inability to make decisions on big infrastructural questions, the chronic waste of taxpayers’ money, and then they want me to put the Government that’s responsible for this back into office? It doesn’t make sense.”

The Fianna Fail-PD coalition, he said, “seems to have been paralysed” on a whole range of issues and had squandered the opportunities presented by the country’s economic success to solve those problems.