Adams: Lenihan should do his ‘patriotic duty’ and resign

FINANCE Minister Brian Lenihan should do his “patriotic duty” and resign, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has said.

Speaking at the party’s ard fheis in Dublin, Mr Adams said the Government had failed the people, opting to “pick their pockets and mug lower- and middle-income earners”.

By contrast, the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition was giving billions of euro to the banks “with almost no strings attached”, he said. “It is spending public money, the people’s money, to bail out its property developer friends in Anglo Irish Bank, despite the way Anglo Irish and Irish Life & Permanent cooked their books.”

Mr Lenihan had not bothered to read the relevant documentsbefore sinking taxpayers’ money into a “financial cesspit”.

“Or at least that’s what he tells the rest of us. Little wonder that this State is again being linked internationally to corruption, cronyism and cosy cartels.

“The minister for finance should do his patriotic duty. He should go. But he should not go on his own. Mr Lenihan should be joined by his friends. The people cannot afford them. This Government should go also.”

Mr Adams softened his tone somewhat in a radio interview yesterday, however, saying he did not think Taoiseach Brian Cowen was “a corrupt person”.

However, Mr Cowen was part of a political culture that had maintained “mé-féinism” and “preserved the fat cats”, he added.

In his speech, Mr Adams also focused on the salaries of ministers and senior public servants, saying they had to be reduced.

He singled out the pay packets of Health Minister Mary Harney and Health Service Executive boss Prof Brendan Drumm for special attention, saying they were “obscene”.

At the same time, he called for the Government to abandon the hospital co-location policy to which Ms Harney and the HSE are committed.

Elsewhere in the address, which closed the two-day ard fheis on Saturday, Mr Adams claimed the Government was trying to foist the “same, flawed Lisbon treaty” on the public.

“It’s an insult to ask citizens to consider the same treaty again. A new treaty is needed — a new treaty for new times,” he said.

On the North, Mr Adams said union with Britain was “a nonsense”, and claimed that partition was damaging to the economy both north and south.

Working with the Democratic Unionist Party in government was “very difficult”, he added.

“But unionist politicians now know that if they wish to exercise political power they can only do so in partnership with the rest of us. It is a battle a day, every day,” he said.

The North’s deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, told the conference that “union majority rule is gone, and it’s gone forever”.

The North was no longer an orange state, but an orange and green one, he said.