FG says ‘unfit’ Tánaiste has lost plot after controversial BBC interview

TÁNAISTE Mary Coughlan has been accused of being “unfit” for her job and having “lost the plot” after a series of controversial remarks made in a television interview broadcast around the world.

Ms Coughlan was appearing on the BBC’s Hardtalk programme at the weekend when she suggested young people were emigrating “to enjoy themselves” and the loss of well-educated graduates was “not a bad thing” as Ireland continued to have people working here from other countries.

Reacting to the comments Fine Gael labour affairs spokesman Damien English said Ms Coughlan was unfit for her position.

“The Tánaiste has effectively said our children are once again available for export. She is unfit for her position,” he said.

Elsewhere in the interview, remarks made by Ms Coughlan concerning recommendations by the Review Body on Higher Remuneration about pay cuts for top public servants were described as “disingenuous”.

The review body recommended to Government in its September report that performance-related bonuses should be suspended and pay cuts made on basic salaries.

In the budget in December, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan abolished the bonus scheme and announced pay cuts of 8% for assistant secretaries and 12% for deputy secretaries in Government departments However, following lobbying by the Association of Assistant Secretaries and Higher Grades (AASHG), these cuts were scaled back on the basis that the combined effect of both cuts would have been unfair to staff in question.

Despite this, when questioned on the row-back in the recent BBC interview, the Tánaiste insisted the review body “indicated to the Government at the time that those bonuses were intrinsically part of the person’s salary”.

Fine Gael trade spokesman Leo Varadkar described Ms Coughlan’s assertion as “disingenuous” and the “latest in a long line of gaffes”.

“The Tánaiste is wrong about the bonuses to top civil servants. These have never been considered a part of core pay. Brian Lenihan has made the same bogus argument in defence of his own actions,” he said.

Ms Coughlan described the introduction of NAMA as an effort to “get banking back to what it should be doing, and rightly so, which is lending to business”.

This is despite the emergence last week that the International Monetary Fund told Brian Lenihan last April it did not believe NAMA would result in a significant increase in bank lending in Ireland.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment declined to comment on the interview.