Taoiseach refuses to speculate on coalition

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern yesterday pointedly refused to speculate on coalition arrangements for Fianna Fáil after next year’s elections, saying he would begin to consider the matter only when the results come in.

The Taoiseach, speaking at the annual “think-in” of his party in Westport, would not be drawn on any possible deals with Labour and the Greens.

However, in a major policy development, Mr Ahern disclosed that the Government’s new target for renewable and alternative energy such as wind power is likely to be 30% of the national grid within 20 years. At present, less than 5% of our energy needs is supplied by wind power, and the current target for the next two decades is 13%, less than half the new figure.

Following an address by Oxford University energy expert Dieter Helm to the party’s TDs and senators, Mr Ahern also firmly ruled out nuclear power for Ireland on the basis that the country was too small to sustain such facilities.

Politically, with only nine months to go before the election, and with Fianna Fáil support levels dipping to below the mid-thirties in opinion polls, there was much expectation that the two-day conference in the Mayo town — and a “spoiler” event organised by Fine Gael and Labour in Mullingar — would produce the first serious exchanges of the election campaign.

But publicly at least, Mr Ahern dampened down expectations. The party made no new announcements as happened in Inchdoney two years ago. Mr Ahern confined himself to only relatively mild criticisms of the opposition, which he described as the most negative of all.

In the course of a long press conference after yesterday’s meeting, the Taoiseach instead focused on long-term Government commitments on energy and concentrated in a singular manner on the Fianna Fáil campaign in the run-up to the 2007 election, making little reference to its opponents.

He also reiterated that December’s Budget would not be a giveaway budget, notwithstanding the surplus available to the Government, as evidenced by yesterday’s strong Exchequer figures for August.