Dempsey points finger of blame for crash at Taoiseach
Following the publication of two reports showing Government policy was central to bringing about the “homemade” crash, Mr Cowen attempted to pass on the blame, saying he was acting on economic forecasts and societal demands for more spending.
But his colleague, Transport Minister Noel Dempsey, yesterday pointed the finger at his party leader.
“People can make their own judgment. Brian Cowen – you can blame him for leading us into this,” he said. “But I think these two reports make it quite clear that he is leading us out of it as well,” Mr Dempsey told RTÉ Radio.
The Government made mistakes, he said, and some decisions were wrong but “we have to live with that”.
Mr Dempsey said the public “have every right to be annoyed that we have got ourselves into this” but that “since the crisis hit, the Government has taken all the right decisions”.
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said there was nothing that surprised him in the two reports published on Wednesday – one by Central Bank governor, Patrick Honohan, the other by two international experts Klaus Regling and Max Watson, which found government policy “left the economy vulnerable to a deep crisis”.
Mr Lenihan said the reports did not just deal with Mr Cowen but “the general policy of the Government from 2000 right on to 2007 and says there were a number of crucial policy mistakes made”.
He said Ireland enjoyed a “healthy boom” based on export-led growth and job creation up until 2000, but “unfortunately the construction-related element of it became far too dominant from the beginning of this decade”.
The report said Ireland had three times more property-related tax breaks than the European average and these were granted on “an ad-hoc basis in a not fully transparent way”.
Mr Lenihan told RTÉ radio yesterday: “There is nothing in Mr Regling’s report that surprises me, I have had to deal with these problems since becoming Minister for Finance.”
The Government continued to try to transfer some of the blame to opposition parties, with Mr Lenihan saying there was a “sociopolitical context” in which “more and more money was demanded to be spent all the time and less and less tax all the time”.
The opposition were “urging us to spend more” according to Mr Dempsey, who said: “The promises made by Fine Gael and Labour between 2002 and 2007 would have cost an extra €34 billion of money that we now know we didn’t have.”
Mr Lenihan went one step further than the Taoiseach by saying he was sorry for the current problems.
“I certainly deeply regret what happened because there were decisions made that were wrong decisions.
“Yes, we did spend too much money and yes we did neglect our tax base and they were mistakes. But let’s be clear about it, they weren’t mistakes that were highlighted by very many at the time and many of those who predicted the collapse of the property bubble did so at a very late stage,” said Mr Lenihan.
Asked if this was an apology, something the Taoiseach has so far failed to deliver, Mr Lenihan said: “An expression of regret in my language is a sorry, yes.”
