FF to blame for high consumer prices, says FitzGerald
The former Fine Gael leader, who led two governments in the 1980s, claimed former Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy’s management of the economy around 2000 boosted the cost of goods and services.
Mr McCreevy, who left the Cabinet as Finance Minister in 2004 to became the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, delivered seven budgets after coming to office in 1997.
Mr 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 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.”
Mr Fitzgerald also told TV3’s Ireland AM programme yesterday that striking a deal between employers and unions in the social partnership talks would be very difficult.
