Bertie launches personal Dáil attack on Higgins

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern reacted angrily to criticism of the Government’s record on housing by Deputy Joe Higgins yesterday, labelling the Socialist Party TD “a failed person” in an unusually personalised attack.

Mr Higgins had raised the newly-published report by Permanent TSB and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), which detailed the massive increases in house prices over the last decade.

The study made “chilling reading for tens of thousands of young working people in need of homes”, Mr Higgins told the Dáil. “In March 1996, the average price of a home in Dublin was €82,000. This year, 10 years later, it is €384,000, an increase of €300,000. That represents a shocking €30,000 increase per year. Prices outside Dublin have increased pro rata.”

He said Mr Ahern had “failed cataclysmically to stop the unbridled speculation by developers and house builders”, adding that this was “deliberate” party policy and dated “all the way back to the devil’s pact made between Fianna Fáil and house builders and speculators in the 1960s”.

The builders, he said, had “bought the party’s councillors who in turn corrupted planning in Dublin and, perhaps, other areas and created the nightmare we now have”.

Referring to late Taoiseach Charles Haughey, Mr Higgins added: “They [also] bought the party’s former leader, who the Taoiseach eulogised unstintingly last Friday. The VIP pen in the Donnycarney church was like a major house builders’ convention.”

However, Mr Ahern staunchly defended the Government’s record on housing, before rounding on Mr Higgins and the Socialist Party’s policies.

Mr Higgins wanted to bring Ireland back “to the days of pathetic poverty when de Valera and Lemass built social houses, when no other houses were being built”, said Mr Ahern. “People were living in council houses and had to emigrate because they had no jobs and no future.”

When Mr Higgins pointed out that these were Fianna Fáil politicians, Mr Ahern responded: “Does Deputy Higgins wish to drag us back to a time when people had no salaries and no jobs?

“He has a failed ideology and the most hopeless policy pursued by any nitwit. He is a failed person, whose failed policy has been rejected. He will not pull people back into the failed old policies he dreamed up in south Kerry when he was a young fellow. Now go away.”

While Mr Higgins has often provoked flashes of anger from Mr Ahern in the past, it is unusual for the Taoiseach to personalise his ripostes. But last night, a spokeswoman for Mr Ahern said he was unrepentant.

Asked if the Taoiseach regretted his comments, or had sought out Mr Higgins to apologise, she said: “No.”

The exchanges were simply part of the routine “cut and thrust of the Dáil”, she added.