Fianna Fáil rules out post-election pact with SF

FIANNA Fáil has promised voters it won’t enter a coalition with Sinn Féin or form a minority government dependent on support from the party in the Dáil.

“Can we give you a very clear message that Fianna Fáil would not go into government with Sinn Féin or go into government dependent on Sinn Féin,” Education Minister Mary Hanafin told reporters yesterday.

She was speaking at a Fianna Fáil press conference on State pensions at the party’s election headquarters in Dublin.

Ms Hanafin, Social Affairs Minister Séamus Brennan and Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern all ruled out any prospect of Fianna Fáil doing a deal with Sinn Féin in the event of the latter winning enough seats to be potential kingmaker after the election.

“On policy issues, we’ve no real coming-together with Sinn Féin,” said Mr Ahern. “They’re a Marxist-socialist party… I would be very suspicious of a party who said just before the election they wanted to increase corporation tax from 12.5% to 17.5%, and then, once they were put under pressure during the election, they flip-flopped and said: ‘Oh no, we’ll leave it at 12.5%.’

“You also see that they want to go back renationalising at a cost of €6 billion a number of our State companies. So there really isn’t any coming-together of policies, and as we said at the start of this campaign, we will be going into this... based on our policies.”

Ms Hanafin said she believed voters would find any deal allowing Sinn Féin to enter government “unacceptable”.

“I think it would be unacceptable to the vast majority of the people that there would be a government with Sinn Féin, and Fianna Fáil would not enter into it… [And] it would be unacceptable, I believe, in a minority FF government to be dependent on SF.”

Mr Ahern said he believed Fianna Fáil would “go into opposition” before entering a coalition with Sinn Féin.

“I think we’d go into opposition if that was put up… We’ve no commonality of policies with them, and it’s inconceivable that we would in any way take support from them or go into government with them. We’ve said that time and time again — how often do we have to say it? It’s off the agenda.”