Call for ‘show of outrage’ over NAMA

MASS street protests will lead Labour’s “all out” fight against NAMA, Eamon Gilmore yesterday pledged.

The party leader called for a show of outrage outside Leinster House when the Dáil returns to debate the controversial “bad bank” plan next Wednesday.

He said Labour would then “take the fight” into the Dáil chamber and try to derail the plan anyway it could.

“We will use every parliamentary tactic to block and try to defeat the Government’s NAMA legislation,” he said.

Mr Gilmore dismissed the amendments to the NAMA proposals as a “genetically modified fig leaf” intended to give political cover to the Greens so they can continue to support Fianna Fáil without a backlash from their grassroots supporters.

“The bankers and developers to be bailed out by NAMA are the same irresponsible people who created this economic carnage.

“It is another example of the toxic triangle linking bankers, developers and Fianna Fáil.

“The NAMA proposals will mortgage this country for generations to come – our grandchildren will still be paying for this mistake in decades to come,” he added at the end of Labour’s parliamentary party two-day “think-in” in Waterford.

Mr Gilmore insisted he would be against a 10% cut in the public sector pay bill as urged by Bord Snip author Colm McCarthy.

Mr Gilmore said the wage reduction would hurt people struggling to make do on €400 a week, and called for high earners to have their salaries capped at €200,000 a year to cut costs to the taxpayer.

Mr Gilmore also said Labour would introduce a third tax level to hit those earning above €100,000 a year.

“We have to be very specific, some people are in a better position to take pain, and some are not in a position to take pain at all.

“We need to be talking as a country about having a more equal regime in pay. There is a need and is scope for cutting pay of people who are paid very, very highly, but there is no case and no justification to cut the pay of people who are on the minimum wage and who are low incomes and can’t afford it.

“We have a very unequal society. We have a situation where in some enterprises, for example, you have chief executives and top people who are paid 20 or 30 times what the average worker in that employment is paid.”