Harney warns PDs will quit a ‘spendthrift’ government
Laying down the conditions under which her party would pull out of the Fianna Fáil-led administration, Ms Harney said this would happen “if we were to return to a tax and spend philosophy or put at risk our economic success”.
“The economy is fundamental,” she told Newstalk 106 radio’s Breakfast Show. “We would be very politically shortsighted if we were to engage in a spending spree.”
Ms Harney was speaking as Fianna Fáil gathered in west Cork to formulate a plan for the party’s recovery from its disastrous local election results last June.
Remarking on the party’s decision to invite outspoken critic and social justice campaigner, Fr Sean Healy, to address the gathering, she warned that Fr Healy’s policies “would lead to economic disaster”.
She also said that no more money should be poured into the health service without a radical change in the way services were delivered. While she said delays in accident and emergency departments and scarcities of services for cancer patients and the elderly were “inexcusable”, she added: “We have missed a number of opportunities regarding reform.”
Ms Harney said she did not believe Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy’s departure to Brussels would turn FF on its head by leaving the party without its chief exponent of low-tax, low-spend regimes.
Ms Harney’s remarks came ahead of the PDs’ own one-and-a-half day long meeting in Leinster House at which the party’s two ministers, two junior ministers, four deputies and four senators are considering their electoral strategy.
On her own future, the Tánaiste said she wanted to move from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in the Cabinet reshuffle and said she would have done so after the 2002 General Election except that she wanted to see insurance reforms implemented before she left the brief.
She would not identify which department she would like to head but said she wanted a brief which involved a lot of reform. "” like to be able to say I did that, I did that, I did that. I am not big into reading textbooks about how things should be done,” she said.
