Irish MEPs call for cross-party budget planning

IRISH MEPs have hinted that there could be co-operation and cross-party support on the difficult four-year budgetary plans ahead.

Speaking in Brussels yesterday, Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell said Opposition parties needed to assist the Government on stabilising the country’s finances.

Mr Mitchell said a lifting of the party whip system in the Dáil could see Opposition politicians agreeing on budgetary reforms.

He said this would give the Opposition a fair say on legislation and cuts.

“I think we should certainly try and support the Government in getting the finances under control. We can’t take responsibility for something over which we have no authority.

“If the Minister for Finance wants us to join the responsibility taken, then he has to give us a say.

“If we’re to get back to the Dáil really taking decisions, then we’ve got to get away from this whole whip system.”

Despite Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny ruling out any return to a ‘Tallaght Strategy’ in cooperating with government measures, Mr Mitchell said agreement could be reached if party coercion on voting in the Dáil was stopped.

“They [the Government] ignored a lot of things which we said down through the years on benchmarking and all of that. There is a sort of feeling in the Fine Gael party that we are not going to be taken for fools,” he said.

The party whip system sees TDs ordered to vote in certain ways on tabled legislation or agreements.

Mr Mitchell said: “We say to the Dáil, ‘Here is all the agreed parameters between all of the parties and we are going to get it [the deficit] down to 3% in a certain period’... and allow people to table amendments accordingly.

“If we agree that they’re going to be the parameters, then we should be able to say what will be the outcome. Will we cut public spending? Will we increase taxes?

That requires the whip system to be lifted.”

Fianna Fáil MEP Liam Aylward agreed with the suggestion that the Dáil’s whip system needed to be changed: “This whip system in Ireland has always been very tight. When you were deciding, somebody else decided what you were doing. I think it’s high time that they had a look at that.”

Mr Aylward said MEPs co-operated with colleagues from the extreme left to the extreme right. “And yet you can get support [bringing through legislation],” he said.

“Ireland could take an example from that. We are operating a system in my view which is archaic.”